Fate/Stay Night - English Patch v3.0

After three years of work, mirror moon have released Fate/Stay Night English Patch v3.0!

Realta Nua voice patch included in the installer. All questions and llamas to ask in their IRC channel (#mirrormoon @ irc.irchighway.net) or in their forums (http://forums.mirrormoon.org)

The 10 Commandments of Facebook

Seriously. Everyone needs to read this.
Depending on how Facebook imports my notes, here's the URL as well: http://www.cracked.com/blog/2008/09/10/the-10-commandments-of-facebook/

Google Bandwagon

Sometimes Google has great ideas. Sometimes they buy awesome ideas.

Sometimes they try, and fail miserably (Orkut? Lively?).

Most of the time, they do it right, and things only fail because people don't like change, and would much rather stick with the established products, thankyou very much.

So how will Google Chrome, a new web browser, fare in the wild? With the beta released yesterday/today/a few hours ago/recently, there have already been people complaining that it's missing some 'vital features'.
Example: Ad Block. Thing is, it's beta, it was released hours ago, and it's owned by people that market ads. Why would they even build an ad block feature into their own browser?! I wouldn't expect ad block until closer to a final release.

Let's just talk about how Chrome compares to other browsers in its primary function - browsing pages. Some people claim it loaded pages slower/didn't load some pages, while others say that they experienced no such problems on the exact same pages.
In general speed tests on graphics heavy pages, Chrome beat Firefox and IE.

So for now, Chrome is both able to browse better and worse than Firefox, with both being better than IE.

Until there is an extensive library of plugins for Chrome as there is for Firefox, it won't be ursuping FF as my primary browser.

Chaos;Head

Described by the development team as a 'Delusional Science' visual novel, Chaos;Head is garnering a new boost in fame with the recent announcement of an anime adaptation. What many of the visual novel community are more interested in, however, is the English localisation project of the game.

Translation was completed at break neck speed, and it appears that we'll soon be able to see just exactly 'whose eyes are those eyes'. Gore may abound, but we're in it for the psychology!

I, for one, want to know why there's an auction of a dead, possibly decaying man (he's green, for goodness' sake!) in a bathroom. Er...

<_<

Battle Moon Wars Act 4

Well, after one day, the C74 games are starting to emerge from the depths. The new Touhou game has been met by a growing horde of fanboys and girls, as has that "Magical Battle Arena" (there's a Kinomoto Sakura look-alike!)...

But the game I was looking forward to most was Battle Moon Wars Act 4. Technically, it's an expansion pack on top of the original Act, one that requires the other two expansions... >_>;; But let's not get into technicalities.

On the same day it went on sale at Comiket, a patch was released on WERK's support page. Not really something that inspires much confidence in their work, but as most of us were wondering if they'd even have anything ready for Comiket... Ah well.

Regardless, a lot of characters make their debut in this act, many of which are going to appear as playable characters (*cheers*). Aozaki Aoko and Bazett Fraga McRemitz are the ones I most want to test, but I'll have to wait until the game gets here. ;_;

Anyhoo, we all look forward to Aroduc's translation. :3

Olympics Fever

Well, opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics of 2008 was last night, and can I say the commentary was almost always at inappropriate times? They talked during the good music and didn't talk when there was er... auditory entertainment that wasn't exactly something the Western culture has much of.

Anyway, the loli at the start was most obviously a Nikki Webster, Mark II. Young female? Check. In a dress? Check. Singing a song? Check. Hanging by wires later? Check. Not much of an improvement on the original, but hey, Webster wasn't that bad at the Sydney Olympics.

The whole printing press thing was very impressive. Australia had this performance where all these little brats had those giant sunshades you put in cars, and they waved them around like it was supposed to look like the ocean. It looked nothing like an ocean. With this one, it was well choreographed and looked so well done I can understand why they had everyone poke their head out at the end - even though you could see their legs down the bottom when they lifted the boxes to their 'maximum' height, a lot of people still thought it was machine run!

And talking about 'maximum' height - not all the performers were the same height. They may have been roughly similar, but man, that must've taken some training to ensure nobody lifted just a bit too much! XD

The song with the British lady was awful. Absolutely awful. Ugly guy and far too extreme for the woman.

What the hell was with the loli with the piano guy? She's grinning like mad at the start, and when we cut to her later, she's slumped over and looks bored as anything.

Regardless, the Opening Ceremony was quite a good watch (SMILE! BE HAPPY! :) :) :) :) SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS!! :) :) :) )... and then came the entrance of the athletes and their groupies.

It. Took. So. Long.

I feel so sorry for all the cheerleaders... what was funny was at the start, they were jumping and waving their arms above their heads. By the time the first fifty or so countries had passed, all were just moving from side to side and clapping their hands, sometimes waving. The ones that were furthest from the entrance barely moved more than clapping! Anyway, the ones closest to the entrance had the most television coverage... and I suppose that's why the organisers put the best looking ones there? Those were also the ones that kept moving the most, but there was a particular lazy one that was sort of doing it half-heartedly... XD

The formation of most teams was horrid, particularly that of the larger groups. You could see that the front two rows were about the width of the track, but then it tapered off at the back to gather at the edge of the track. In the case of the USA, practically all of them shoved off to the edge of the track, extending the length of their procession and slowing down to a snail's crawl as all of them fought to be caught on camera...
Many other countries exhibited this camera whore behaviour, but America was the most obvious, what with having such a large group and because almost all of them were engaging in this behaviour.

Australia came in 3rd last, as there are 15 strokes in the first character of the Chinese version of the name (the last country has 16), and it was rather odd to not see them in the official Australian colours of green and gold. Rudd, when did we become Finland?

And finally, China came in, with a shota at the forehead and a long block of athletes that did not break formation.

Anyway. Somebody upload the ceremony in HD already. Preferably with subtitles.

Think your name sucks? Think again.

Some of us really despise the names we were given. Some of us would do well to realise there are people out there that have far worse names. A New Zealand judge had a girl become a ward of the court so that her name could be changed (this was during a custody battle for the girl), as her name was originally 'Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii'. Serious.
Other such amusing tragic names include 'Sex Fruit' (wth), 'Number 16 Bus Shelter' (um...) and 'Violence'. *cough*

Srsly.

Why so serious?

I saw Batman: The Dark Knight today... major impressions are that the actor for Bruce Wayne isn't 'masculine' enough, Ledger was alright as the Joker (sufficiently loopy), and there were just too many homoerotic subtexts.

Or text. I'm not too sure.

While many hero-villain relationships are almost always spun into being 'something more', the script for this movie seemed to want to remind the viewers that such a practice abounds amongst 'fans' that continue on to write fanfiction... most of which doesn't do the original source material any justice and/or fails as a tribute.

Anyway. It's ok. I think I'll enjoy 'The Forbidden Kingdom' far more, but that may be my HK blood speaking.

Speaking of Hong Kong, why did all the Chinese people speak Mandarin? They were in HONG KONG, for goodness' sake! They should have been speaking Cantonese. Maybe they couldn't hire any Cantonese speaking actors (no actresses, as these were thugs) that would put up with not being able to show their 'awesome kung-fu'. And be beaten up by Bruce Wayne in a completely embarrassingly easy manner.

Or something. Maybe they 'had' to speak Mandarin because that's the official language of China and HK is (and has been for over a decade) part of China. But seriously, Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong - not Mandarin, not English, not German, no. Perhaps the script writers wanted something 'easily understandable' by the Western masses, as Mandarin is the dialect of choice for those wanting to learn Chinese... But that didn't stop them using Cantonese in 'The Departed'.

Anyway, the references to having one's mouth widened with a knife and drinking alcohol with a gaping hole in the side of one's face certainly reminds me of Pan's Labyrinth. Which is interesting, considering Hell Boy II is made by the same group... or something like that.

BTW, with burns that bad? He wouldn't have been in excrutiating pain... all the nerve endings would have been burned.

PS: Lancelot is a better Dark Knight. :)

Dial Before You Dig

Some of you may have seen on the news that Optus services in QLD and northern NSW had gone down for several hours today... due to someone digging to lay down a desalination pipe near Gold Coast. AFAIK, one shouldn't be ploughing fields laced with fibre... Whoopsy~

The unfortunate thing is that we had already been brought down to using the backup, as the main pipe was suffering from a hardware problem. So all those redundancy plans certainly did nothing to prevent Queensland from being cut off from the rest of the world.

Services affected included internet, landline and mobile phones, not only for Optus but also other companies that used Optus infrastructure, such as iiNet internet, 3 mobile and Virgin mobile.

Anyhoo, internet's back up - somebody should tell those Gold Coasters that just because they're so close to the border, they shouldn't act as if they left half their brain across the border at home...

The Music Charts - Episode 1

After acquiring my provisional driver's license, my parents have made me drive them everywhere. At least, when I'm driving, I choose the radio station!

And thus we were listening to the radio - something I don't do very often - and I'm brought (sort-of) up to speed with the charts in the country at this moment.

Thankfully, I'd turned down the volume, or my mother would have been going "CHANGE THE CHANNEL NOW" when Katy Perry's song 'I Kissed a Girl' turned up.

Amused at this song, I was even more amused at all the people who commented on the music video/lyric pages/etc. that they 'loved this song' and that you shouldn't forget that 'im [sic] straight, btw'.

Really. So insecure in their own sexuality that they had to blatantly swing their heterosexuality around, despite the fact that the song is - essentially - one for heterosexual females that are very happy with their boyfriends, thankyou very much, they're just so drunk they're experimenting.

These are also probably the same people who get angry when homosexuals/bisexuals/pansexuals/anyone not like them 'rubs in' whatever makes them different... after all, they're so insecure they're afraid that if someone were to make even one positive argument about 'the other side', that they would 'fall' to the 'dark side'. *cough*

Anyhoo, heterosexual girls, this song's for you. Er... drunk heterosexual girls. *cough*

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy

This story begins with a lot of rambling about the situation before actually playing the game, so if you want to jump to the bit where I actually talk about the game... search for 'So I actually start the game'. You'll be missing the 'amusing' problems I experienced before I could actually play the game...

So like, around four or so years ago, I was in the post office for reasons I do not entirely remember anymore... and in one of their little 'bins', was around six or so copies of this game. Curious - or maybe I really was that bored - I picked up one of them and was astounded at the price.

Four dollars.

Yes, a copy of a PC game released just the year before (and I'm not too sure on when I bought the game either - I could've bought it in 2003 for all I know... I've just had this game for years), was selling for a measly four dollars.

Now, this wasn't some terrible game (garnered scores around the average of 8.1 out of 10 on several reputable review sites), so I wasn't -and still am not - sure as to why it was on sale. Really, I wonder why the post office would have them anyway, so perhaps it was just a bid to get rid of items they weren't supposed to have in stock in the first place.

Anyhoo, impulse purchase (lol), went home, discovered old computer was old (no shit) and that I wouldn't be able to play it until I replaced some parts. Or got a new computer. As I was nearing the time when I would be getting a new one anyway, that was all cool - I'd wait it out. It was only four dollars, anyway.

Motherboard on desktop is replaced, machine passes the system requirements... and I install it.
For some reason, it just stops at the splash screen. *rolls eyes*

So I pretty much give up on it, it being such an impulse and cheap buy in the first place. Wasn't as if I'd really, really, really wanted to play the game anyway, it would've just been nice to.

And now to this year. Winter break, I'm looking for things to do (kinda burned off visual novels at the moment, I think I've played too many XD)... and I come across my old discs.

I install on the desktop. Still stalls. Whatever. Try on my laptop.

Voila! Success! Vista! *cough*

Anyhoo~ So I actually start the game. Finally.

After playing the first 'mission' (ahahaha!! of course you won't get a mission briefing - it's not as if they'd plan for the ship taking you to the Jedi Academy to be shot down!), I thought it needed a bit more customisation. So now my character was wielding a lance saber. To be honest, I was surprised the mod would also affect the 'true' length of the blade - giving my character a reach advantage over those filthy Disciples of Ragnos.

On my next run through, I think I'll use the Darth Vader mod. >_>

The 'story' is pretty much you running around on missions, slicing down people that shoot at you (it's only fair to respond in kind) and sometimes people that aren't (because they were going to shoot at you, or perhaps that robot was blocking your way and the AI isn't advanced enough to have it let you through the doorway first). Also, using the missile launcher to blast Dark Jedi off elevated platforms is really cool. Until you get the smarter ones that use Force Push to knock the missile back at you...

There's some interesting missions - I especially liked the one where you're on a bike-speeder most of the time, and you're zooming around through the valleys... The ones that piss me off, however, are the ones that require you to find the place to set a signal so that some idiot in a fighter can fire bombs at it... and then you have to find the next place, figure out how to get up to the roof (!!), set another one... rinse and repeat. And after all that, you're still not done! You have to find explosives to deactivate - or activate, depending on whether or not what's going to be blown up is what you want destoryed or not. Trying to find your way without a navi? Not fun.

Sure, you could argue that there's no way the Jedi could get blueprints of the Imperial Strongholds or the exact design of some "random" tomb where ancient Jedi and Sith were laid to rest. Honestly, it would have been an improvement if a navi would show the map of where you'd been, and where you were relative to it.

And seriously, playing the game on mute is not an option. There are times important instructions are given by voice... which was particularly true for the mutant Rancor mission. Eurgh. I even set twenty cheat-spawned Luke Skywalkers and Kyle Katarns at it... all were killed. :( That's some mutant...

A lot of the missions were pretty fun, but I really dislike how NPCs have some shitty AI. Especially with regards to changing levels in a building... I don't know how many times the lift got stuck because the accompanying NPC was standing in a position that caused it to stall. ~__~ And then, when you're going from one room to another, some of them don't follow you and just stand there at the doorway... so you have to go back, get them to enter the room, then continue on. In the last level, there's like... five Jedi that stand there and don't follow you down the stairs because the AI is just that weird. Their danger sense to heights is also bad... several of them fell to their deaths. <_<

On the other hand, adversary jedi AI was much better. Stormtroopers and officers were real bad, although some did run away - but not far. There were also a few cases of them just surrendering, arms up in the air... The Reborn, Disciples of Ragnos and bosses were a different matter. Much more advanced, and certainly required a lot of jumping and backpedalling to avoid being cut down.

What was interesting was that those Dark Jedi that specialised in using the Force to attack you (e.g., by using Push to knock you down so their accompanying lightsaber-wielding partner could stab you, using Force Choke or Force Drain, etc.), would be killed by a single full-Force-meter Force Lightning blast. While their lightsaber-wielding company would need a few additional slashes with the lightsaber to take them out as well... You'd think the Force wielder would have higher resistance. *rolls eyes*

A rather unique method of 'telling the story', the requisite 'choose between the Dark and the Light side' scene, good customisability of the character (at the time, and further improved by the user made modifications)... quite a good game. I wouldn't mind seeing a similar product made with better graphics... but I doubt there ever will.

Kara no Kyoukai: Fukan Fuukei

So I watched the first (of seven) Kara no Kyōkai movies just recently, fansubbed by gg-Takajun (yay Takajun! :D Now go work on Heaven's Feel XD).

Well, it certainly made more sense for me than some other viewers, as I'd read the first few 'chapters' of the books, so at least the scene where Ryōgi grabs a spirit with her prosthetic left arm wasn't a 'holy ****, why can she do that?!' scene.

Anyhoo, a wonderfully animated fifty minutes, particularly the bit where Ryōgi leaps onto the rooftop with all the water and skids across. Very snazzy, ufotable! :) You managed to capture the jarring of her feet very realistically, and the scattering water was just that bit more realistic than that seen in Advent Children... although that movie came out a while ago, I suppose. *rolls eyes*

I also enjoyed Kajiura Yuki's music (to be expected, though!), particularly the co-op with Kalafina for the ED. 'Oblivious' is a very nice song, but it's not going to be dethroning 'Egao no Wake' by Kaori Hikita anytime soon.

As for the story... well, considering the source material itself wasn't a big fan of 'pointless exposition', some people may find this story confusing. Others will say it's like that in a bid for realism - after all, what hero(ine) or villain(ess) spends their time talking about how their powers work, what it does, and why they're doing what they do. After all, many of the people in KnK don't actually know the answers to those in the first place...
While it can be argued this 'realism' has been taken too far - after all, it's supposed to be a story first and an alter-world second - further 'chapters' provide more information.

Anyway, movie #2 was just subbed a few days ago, so I'll be watching that. It's the first half of 'Murder Study', and will be about Shiki when she was a child... and before the accident that sent her into a coma.

Code Geass

OK, srsly, 'geas' is pronounced ɡɛʃ, as in... gesh (see the footnote).

Many people pronounce the title as ' Code Geese', because it's spelt 'geass' and saying 'gay ass' is just terrible. The Japanese seiyuu pronounce it 'gee-ahsu'... which is also wrong. In terms of the Irish, that is.

Geass is another form of geas, or geasa, or geis. Wiki it. Irish roots, it's an obligation/prohibition.


So~ how to refer to it?

Code Geese? Code Gay Ass? Code Gee-aaaaaaaaaaah-SU!

Maybe it's more like Code Guess?

Footnote:
g: get, go, guard
ɛ: bed, net, dress
ʃ: she, sugar, machine

Boo for Unrelated Subjects

Aaaand all the related and - more importantly - relevant courses have been assessed. Of course, two of them are actually year long courses, and I don't get a GPA for them until the end of the year. <_> And we have to pass every single unit for one, and assessment for the other... ;_;

Anyway. That's unrelated to the topic.

Final exam: biochemistry.

What. In. The. Nine. Hells. ?.

Useless subject. Why the hell do I need to know about metabolism... it's got nothing to do with me! All I need to care about with regards to digestion is the process of mastication and carbohydrate digestion beginning with amylase being secreted in saliva... and maybe if the person happens to regurgitate stuff, that it's bad and will cause damage to their oral tissues.

Regardless. Here I am, learning about carbohydrate metabolism, the fates of glucose/pyruvate/etc., lipid metabolism, amino acid metabolism (this is even more WTH)...

GARGH. What a waste of my money. ;_;

Yay for Related Subjects

So, exam for Oral Biology was Monday evening (got home so late T_T), but yay for the fact that I don't have to study the periodontal tissues for Clinical Dental Practice because... I've already studied it.

...and the epidemiology of today's Public Oral Health exam also covers some material for the periodontal diseases component of Clinical Dental Practice.

The odd man out, Biochemistry... is on the backburner. I'm not studying for that until after Clinical. Mainly because there are three whole days to study for Biochem.

And it's boring. And stupid. And useless.

TL;DR, studying this EOS period was a little easier than previous ones because studying for one subject meant studying a little bit of another...

FINALLY, we move onto relevant material.

Random 'Friends' on FaceBook

It's been under a week since I joined, and I've already had several friend requests from people that have made be think 'who the hell is s/he?!'

Um... And to find out, I had to add them, just to see if they were some poor underclassman that I'd only been introduced to once and I'd - in my scatterbrainedness (META LANGUAGE YAY) - forgotten...

Quite honestly, I still go 'wait a minute, did I even talk to this person for more than two hours in the whole time I went to the same school as them?!'

In fact, of one them I don't think I ever spoke to. Ever.

And it's just too rude to delete them. I think. <_<

So if you happen to be one of these people, do drop a line... I'm curious as to why you'd add some almost-stranger. I, at least, had a reason. ;)

Get Off the Road, People~

...because SOMEBODY has their Provisional license. :D

Battle Moon Wars

This isn't actually a visual novel... it's a turn based strategy fighter game based on the TYPE-MOON novels (visual and not).
The fight mechanics are pretty much a clone of Super Robot Wars, and for gamers that were old hands with SRW, BMW was easy enough to pick up.

In this story, stagnation is occurring in Misaki City (setting of Tsukihime), and some members of this investigatory government group (I think they're government XD) are sent to determine what's causing it and to help the guardian of that land out. Seeing as the Tohno family is the guarding family of Misaki City, it's Akiha the two agents have to seek out.

Anyway, vampires once thought defeated, servants of the Holy Grail War that was thought to have been ended forever - all these resurface in Misaki, and a collection of characters from Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai and Fate/Stay Night (and their related spin-offs/sequels, such as Len from Kagetsu Tohya and Kaleido Ruby from Fate/Hollow Ataraxia) all end up working together to defeat the evil that shouldn't even exist.

While the story is intriguing (there's some really LOL moments, such as when Arcueid sees a mahou shoujo movie and decides she's going to be a magical girl too, under the name Phantasmoon), it is worth noting that all the characters are equal here - there is no 'a servant possesses roughly 1/4 of Arcueid's strength' (although she isn't really fighting as Arcueid, but rather a nerfed mahou shoujo), nor 'only Ciel and Kishima Kouma [of Tsukihime] would be able to fight against a servant in a defensive fight'.
Of course, there isn't really any other way of having a strategy component if just one character could practically god-hack all the characters dead in one turn...

Anyway, there's a translation project of this game in progress, alongside the fact that WERK (the company behind BMW) haven't actually finished all the expansion packs to this game yet... Part 4 is apparently going to come out in August this year.

State of Origin, Game #2

HAHAHAHA! WHAT A MAULING.

QLD: 30, NSW: 0

Srsly. How bad was that. :D

Looks like all the interstaters will be all ;_; now... Considering most of the people in the degree are from interstate, almost all of them were cheering for NSW. XD

Tsukihime: Far Side of the Moon Routes

Aaaand~ here's the second part of the Tsukihime post.

In the Far Side of the Moon routes, we have Akiha's True and Normal ends, Hisui's True and Good ends, and Kohaku's True end. Kohaku is the only heroine in the game that only has one ending, nor can you reach her route until you've played either of Hisui's...
The Far Side routes are about 'the threat from within' - in this case, the Tohno family.

The endings in these routes are far less light-hearted than in the Near Side routes (although you could argue the True ends weren't very light-hearted at all), and this became quite apparent when I played both of Akiha's endings.

The Tohno family is descended from demonic blood, and those that inherit this blood all possess something inhuman inside them. Some of them fall prey to the 'inversion impulse', when their demonic instincts come to the surface and reign supreme.

Seven years ago, a child of the Tohno family fell prey to the inversion impulse and killed a child adopted by Tohno Makihasa (the head of the family at the time).

Was that the beginning? Perhaps the beginning was when Makihasa had the Nanaya family - a clan of demon killers - wiped from the face of the earth and, on a whim, adopted the last survivor because the child had the same name as his own son.
Perhaps the beginning was when Makihasa adopted two girls with the ability to help him suppress his inversion impulse, but at the expense of their childhood.
Perhaps the beginning was many centuries ago, when a man fell in love with the Princess of the True Ancestors (vampires that were born vampires, rather than 'Dead Apostles' - humans that became vampires).

The events of Tsukihime are all intertwined. Even if Arcueid isn't present in some of the Far Side routes, her existence itself was one of the root factors behind the events that occurred.

There's no way someone could just play one of the routes and not play the rest. Most people would probably install the non-ero patch though. :P

Tsukihime: Near Side of the Moon Routes

OK, so I compared several of the previously mentioned visual novels with Tsukihime. A lot. A bit too much.

So I may as well do a piece on it. Rather than flood this place with one post per route, I'm just going to do two posts - one for the Near Side of the Moon routes (Arcueid True and Good ends, Ciel True and Good ends), and one for the Far side of the Moon routes (Akiha True and Good ends, Hisui True and Good ends, Kohaku end).

Anyway. Any of the Near Side of the Moon routes provides the background necessary to understand the universe of Tsukihime. Hence, one cannot progress to any of the Far Side of the Moon routes without playing to the end of either of Arcueid's or Ciel's routes. Considering the choices needed to be taken to get onto the Ciel route (and stay on it) compared to those needed to keep to the Arcueid route, it is actually 10 times easier (roughly) to get Arcueid's endings.

Just a piece of random trivia.

Anyway. In this game, you play the role of Tohno Shiki, a male student that was disowned by his father and sent to live with a branch family. Just prior to the beginning of the game, Tohno Makihasa (the father) passes away, and Shiki is called back to the Tohno mansion by the new head of the Tohno family.
The reason why Shiki was disowned in the first place was that after an almost fatal accident seven years ago, he was too weak to remain the heir of the family and would thus tarnish the name if he remained in the Tohno mansion.

Meanwhile, there have been mysterious murders occurring in their city - the victims have all been found to have been completely drained of blood. With all of the chaos of moving house going on, Shiki pays little attention to these deaths, thinking that that sort of thing wouldn't happen to anyone he knew.

Until one day, he encounters a beautiful foreign women that seems so otherworldly it makes his blood pound and his mind to scream that he wants to...

...kill her.

Tohno Shiki, a young man capable of seeing the 'death of things' after he all but died seven years ago. And it was thus that he sliced Arcueid into seventeen pieces.

Of course, she comes back to "life", being a vampire. *rolls eyes* She ropes him into helping her hunt down other vampires to make up for the fact that she was weakened by his actions, and thus begins the many trials and tribulations of Shiki.

The story of the Near Side of the Moon deals with 'the threat from outside', whether it's Arcueid losing control of her vampire instincts or the monstrous vampire she's hunting deciding that Shiki is an eyesore and needs to be removed right now. Near Side serves mostly as an introduction to Tsukihime, laying the background for the Far Side routes. Even so, the routes aren't completely lacking in complexity and are still good stories in their own right.

For those that watched the anime, you really should play the game to find out why there are die-hard fans that insist that 'there was no Tsukihime anime'. Truly, the anime failed to capture a lot of the character expression and development seen in the game. The manga version has so far managed to stay faithful to the game, but as in most cases - the original is the best. There is no media adaptation that can give you all the possible scenes that are seen in the game.

Visual Novel Translation Group: mirror moon

One of the better established visual novel translation groups is mirror moon, the group 'responsible' for the English localisations of Tsukihime, Tsukihime Plus+Disc, Melty Blood, Melty Blood: ReACT and Utawarerumono (this was a joint with Soylations).

Their translator, Takajun, was also the translator for the first Kara no Kyoukai movie, Fukan Fūkei (the fansubbing of it was done by the group gg). With a great number of successful projects under his belt, mirror moon's translation accuracy appears to be very good.

mirror moon focusses mostly on TYPE-MOON games, and is currently working on Fate/Stay Night (the translation of the last route, Heaven's Feel, is just past 80% at the time of writing this post). There is no indication whether they will work on Fate/Tiger Colosseum, but it is almost certain they will not be working on Fate/Hollow Ataraxia or Kagetsu Tohya as there already exist two translation 'groups' for the former and a complete English patch for the latter.

The other major project that is in progress is Men at Work! 2, which is currently going through beta testing.

In regards to the large amount of piracy that occurs with visual novels (as they are difficult to procure over seas), this group takes the policy of 'don't ask, don't tell'. Of course, there are some people that don't read the rules, and/or don't realise that what they're saying makes it obvious that they have pirated the game...

Wind -a breath of heart-

Wind -a breath of heart- didn't really live up to expectations. I was expecting some epic character development far beyond that seen in Tsukihime, as the latter fell into more than just the romance genre.

...what I got had some smatterings of action, some (over-played) drama, a cliché set of girls (the tsundere, the promised one, the imouto-that-isn't-actually-related, the girl-with-more-problems-than-the-others and the crazy non-human girl) and some really random characters that didn't actually contribute to the storyline. Of course, that last one may be more due to the fact that the people translating it seemed to cut corners at times, for the sake of 'making it flow better' as the original version was 'a complete mess'. It's a possibility.

This story could have been a lot better, and since the translating group seems to have a pretty good reputation (and didn't get completely flamed over cutting a few corners here and there), let's assume that the English translation is representative of the original work.

Um... it had an interesting premise, but I think it could have been improved by dropping some of the routes (i.e., one of the sisters at least). Hikari's route was completely 'what on earth?!', and one had to suspend their disbelief to continue reading at many times - particularly that route.

It was an alright piece of fun, but certainly not one of my favourite visual novels.

A Midsummer Day's Resonance

A very short visual novel, again available in English for free. This one I didn't really like.

The set-up of the story was a little contrived, it forced the reader along (for example, the POV character becomes completely enamoured with a girl for no other reason than that she is incredibly beautiful) and seemed to merely exist as a 'HAHA PLOT TWIST ARE YOU SATISFIED?' sort of story.

Of course, most of us were expecting that 'twist'. Honestly. As if all the 'hints' being dropped weren't enough.

Anyway, premise of this story is that the main character happens to have a guy run over her schoolbag with his bicycle. In that bag is her school things, as well as her mobile phone and a bottle of soft drink. Soft drink - which she buys every morning and puts in her bag to drink at school later - explodes all over her stuff, and soaks into the cracks of her crushed mobile phone. For some odd reason, she carries the completely broken phone around, when suddenly, it projects a screen in front of her and on that screen is another girl...

Main character chats with this Girl A, who also brings her neighbour Girl B to chat. Main character 'falls in love' with Girl B, everyone chats, various blatant plot points are thrown around, the three girls decide to meet up after exams.

Anyway. For reasons which are complete spoilers, they can't actually meet up. Main character is depressed at losing these two dear friends of hers (cue eye-roll), and the magic phone connection never works again.

...and she asks out the guy who broke her phone.

I don't know. A very short story (although in this case, it was probably a good thing), a rather stupid storyline, some 'home truths' stuffed in at the end... The SFX were annoying (with that bzzzt of the holographic screen turning on/shorting out), the music wasn't anything particularly spectacular, nor was the artwork.

Not one I would recommend to others.

True Remembrance

True Remembrance is a free visual novel by Shiba Satomi (available for download in English from the first link), and is a relatively long story (for a non-commercial game) about, well, life. It's not exactly a 'slice-of-life' game, but I suppose the major themes I got out of it would include things like 'the things sacrificed to achieve a goal' and 'overcoming loss'.

The world of True Remembrance is one where 'The Dolor' has infected humans - a state of severe depression that can only be remedied by having the offending memories suppressed by a Mnemonicide. The main male character, Blackiris, is an alpha class Mnemonicide (the highest class bar the omega class), and the story begins with his meeting his next assigned patient, La.

This may seem like a rather slow story, but in a world where action packed movies abound and we are fed with endless dramatic stories, one must remember that the old classics like Lord of the Rings began with a lot of background building. Even with that said, the seemingly pointless introduction contains little bits of information that become more significant as more is revealed.

Unlike Narcissu, this has a happy ending. Sort of. It's a bit of a sad story at times, but it doesn't over do it to the point of being overly emotional. The background music of this game is also lovely, something which most of us take for granted in the visual novel scene.

Fate/Stay Night: Fate Route

I wasn't entirely enamoured with this ending, as it was far too similar to Arcueid's True End in Tsukihime... of course, the people who played F/SN's Fate route before playing Tsukihime said the complete opposite!

I suppose it meant that we all found the ending a bit trite. It's true that the 'end' is the same (the girl can't hang around for various reasons), but the way the story progressed to that point was different. To me, Continuation of the Dream seemed a bit rushed compared to Tsukihime (referring to Arcueid's True End, not the entire game!), but that's probably because Saber couldn't control how fast she was disappearing.

As it is, the story itself is a very good tale. Lots of very good fights, lots of interesting scenes, heaps of awesome BAD ENDs, plenty of amusing Ti Taiga Tiger Dojos (the help corner after reaching certain BAD ENDs, much like 'Teach Me, Ciel-sensei!' in Tsukihime)...

A very good story (my favourite part would have to be when you tell Saber you're fasting today), and I'll look forward to the epic GARness of Ultimate Blade Works and Heaven's Feel. That's three and a half routes to play, as UBW has a True and Good End, while HF "only" has a True End, with a pseudo-real ending labelled 'Normal End'.

Status, on

After many searches for reliable free hosting, I've decided that I may as well just have it hosted on Blogger. It's reliable - I think. XD After all, it's owned by Google now, so if they ever go down, the world's going to end anyway.

Regardless, content will be up when it's up.