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Visual Novel Translation Status (06/03/2017)

This week’s header image comes from our TWO releases: Dies Irae (Steam), LoveKami -Useless Godess (Steam), and Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception/Mask of Truth (PS4, PS Vita).

VNTS (Visual Novel Translation Status Updates Series) is published each Saturday and brings the latest updates from VN translation projects — both licensed and by fans — from around the net. If you find any errors, or you think a project is missing from this list, please let us know in the comments.

From The Team:  I’m back! And alive! And very, very thankful for Decay’s help the last few weeks. He’s a champ. And it’s a good week to be a VN reader, too: three releases, including the much-looked-forward-to Dies Irae. Any of you playing it out there? For those of us on Vita island, Utawarerumono came out as well (it’s also on PS4, but we all know the Vita’s install base dwarfs its console counterpart). Tay

Decay note: I in no way made a mistake that would lead Tay into believing that Utawarerumono came out this week. Nope. Nor do we have it in our banner or have already mentioned it twice already this post. I don’t know what you’re talking about. These things haven’t happened. (for real though it’s all my fault)

The Short Version: Only the New Stuff

New Releases!

  • Dies Irae (Light) – Released on Steam! Get it here.Common route released for free, with the rest of the game split in two parts, available as separate purchases.
  • LoveKami -Useless Godess (Moenovel) – Released! Get it on Steam here.

All the Game Updates:

Fan Translation Projects

Fan Translation Projects

[wpdatatable id=392]

JAST USA Projects

JAST USA (Updates; Archive)

[wpdatatable id=388]

MangaGamer Projects

MangaGamer (Updates)

[wpdatatable id=389]

Sekai Project Projects

Sekai Project (Update Page)

[wpdatatable id=390]

Other
  • Here’s a handy link to sort Sekai Project’s Steam releases by release date: link

Misc. Projects

Other Projects

[wpdatatable id=391]

VNTS Commentary Section

Zakabox™ 「This is the place where Zaka occasionally shares his wisdom. Will he show up this week? Will he have anything to say? Only time will tell.」

Decay’s MusingsBoy am ever I glad to have Tay back. Unfortunately for him, he has to contend with me constantly forgetting to remove the “new” status from unupdated entries. Luckily for him, however, I was here to fix that screw-up in a 100% seamless manner. Now everything is just perfect.

As you may have guessed, I’ve been a little immersed in Dies irae these last two days. I’ve already logged over 10 hours into it, and apparently I’m only just barely halfway through the common route? Yeesh. This one’s gonna take a while, which is a little scary considering the capricious nature of my attention span. Maybe I’ll finish it, maybe I won’t. Who knows!

I am enjoying what I’ve read so far. I don’t want to say too much about its themes and all that until I’m further in, but I will say that so far, it’s basically as advertised. There’s well-paced action, a whole shitload of characters all with their own hidden motivations, maniacally evil nazi-esque villains you really want to punch, impenetrably cryptic philosophical discussions, and German and Latin-inspired fantasy jargon up the wazoo.

And for the most part, the translation handles it well. When the narration and dialogue gets incredibly verbose, the translation gives off that pretentiousness very well. You really get a feeling for how far up their own asses these characters are. The action is written well, giving you a good sense of everything happening while still keeping it exciting. And the translation is funny when it’s time to be that, too. If I have any issues, it’s that there’s a greater than typical rate of typos and minor grammatical errors, and that there are what I perceive to be occasional tonal inconsistencies—characters wording things in ways that feel out of character and that kind of stuff. The average reader is unlikely to notice this much, and the work is overall still very enjoyable.

Dies irae’s release format sure stirred up a lot of controversy though, huh? People have this extreme fear of DLC ingrained to them at this point, where the mere mention of it will spark huge reddit threads and twitter outrages, no matter the context. In this case, I think this is a very consumer-friendly approach. A gigantic 20-ish hour chunk of the game is free for everyone, and the two “acts” that comprise the entire game are affordably priced. My only complaint as a consumer is that the acts are organized in the order they were initially released in Japan, and not in the recommended reading order. That’s bound to confuse some.

There’s some debate as to whether or not this is a smart business move, which only time will tell us if it is. Light most likely saw that 100,000 people booted up Chusingura and wanted that many eyes on Dies irae. How well CSG was able to convert those freeloaders to paying customers is data that is not available on Steamspy or anywhere else, so it’s hard to predict how DI will fare.

The optimist says that for a budding genre, a free entry point could do wonders to attract a viable market. The pessimist says that most Steam users don’t spend much time on any one VN release, so they’re liable to get their fill by the time the extensive DI common route is over and move on. Both points are perfectly valid, and I honestly have no idea how this will turn out. Hopefully at the very least, well enough that we get to see other Light games released in English.

TAYsteful Thoughts™I’ve been out of commission for a few weeks, now, and I’m even more behind than normal. For those who keep an unhealthily close eye on Fuwa, you’ll be happy to know that the Forums are fixed up and the front site is halfway re-worked. Still need to add a bazillion games to the site, though.

I want to highlight what may be the greatest thing in the world: Rabu Rabu TL’s dynamic progress tracker for Lover Able. It’s glorious, and it makes my life as a VNTS-er so much easier. THANK YOU!

I think I’m in love.

Give me a day or two and then I’ll be ready for a powwow. Until then, have a good week, everybody!

Tay

I'm the Fuwanovel community admin and a big fan of Visual Novels. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via a PM on the Fuwanovel Forums, by twitter (@ArchmageTay), or by email.

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Kaziek
Kaziek
6 years ago

Oh no! Shi NI IKU Kimi.. Why? God why?
Thanks as always xD

Gale
Gale
6 years ago

>The average reader is unlikely to notice this much,

The way Decay is trying to appear more and more elite with every year is pretty amusing to watch.

Skrewball717
Skrewball717
Reply to  Gale
6 years ago

@Gale: Casual might have been better, but I get what you mean lol.

Happy to see MG finally starting to release their backlog of fully tl’d games.

Decay
Reply to  Gale
6 years ago

Oh nooooo.

I mean, simply put, there are things that most readers do and don’t notice. It’s sort of like how when talking about Nier Automata, you can say that the average gamer probably won’t mind its overall lack of combat depth compared to most Platinum games, maybe? Is that still elitist? lol

Gale
Gale
Reply to  Decay
6 years ago

Not really, since it’s a simple preference and an obvious thing that’s hard not to notice, not a real intellectual debate of the highest level.

“Unlike most I am able to feel the subtle changes in wording that don’t suit the characters I know for several hours, hence the translation is not perfect and has occasional tonal inconsistencies that only the best will be able to pick up so you plebs will be fine, it’s good enough for you, just not ideal for the men of greater mind. Even an all-star team failed, I’m still searching for that ultimate experience…”

It’s not bad, just an amusing detail, no offence ever meant from my humblest self.

Virperditus
Virperditus
6 years ago

Thanks for update to VNTS Team. Glad to see MG break through their bottleneck and start releasing VNs, even if I expected SukiSuki or Happiness or even Bokuten.

littleshogun
littleshogun
6 years ago

This week VNTS Review from mine (Sorry for being late here), and I think I’m pretty much okay with DLC thing from Dies Irae although I understand that DLC might be get some flak because most of the gamer will associate DLC as some sort of fanservice thing ie unnecessary content. Well, to each of their own here.

https://forums.fuwanovel.net/blogs/entry/1811-day-of-wrath-~inutilis-dea~-review/

By the way, welcome back there Tay.

gagantous
gagantous
6 years ago

is there any statement by dergonru that their team will not translate Shi NI IKU Kimi ?

Decay
Reply to  gagantous
6 years ago

I’ve talked to a couple different people in the know about the project, including Dergonu himself. We probably should have been more descriptive with our removal reasoning. So for starters, this isn’t really Dergonu’s project anymore. Somebody else took over and Dergonu stepped down, not directly involving himself anymore. And since dergonu didn’t get much done to begin with, I’m pretty sure the new translator started over. So, it’s theoretically a new project with a new team.

However, that new team hasn’t actually announced anything yet, and they’ve also been unresponsive to any inquiries sent their way. And it doesn’t seem like they’ve been all that active to begin with. So we decided to remove the project from the list until either the new team steps up and publicly claim an intent to work on the project in earnest, or until Dergonu comes back and does so. It just felt strange having the project listed as Derognu’s project with his progress when neither of those parts were true anymore, as it’s now in the hands of an anonymous team with unknown progress.