On the night of August 19th 2023, a representative of an anonymous fan translation group has released the full patch for the Ricotta eroge Walkure Romanze on 4chan in the /vn/ board, accessible through the /vg/ (videogame generals) section of the BBS.
The game can be downloaded and bought from DMM. You can get the download patch directly here.
Walkure Romanze (going by the full title Walkure Romanze ~Shoujo Kishi Monogatari~) is Ricotta’s main franchise. Before this game, they only had their debut title Princess Lover! to their name. Walkure Romanze was first released in November 2011 in Japan. Later followed the fandisc Walkure Romanze More&More as well as Walkure Romanze Re:tell. In 2018, Ricotta also sold a package containing the whole Walkure Romanze franchise, called Walkure Romanze Series 4 Set – Limited Edition.
Walkure Romanze's story revolves around Mizuno Takahiro, a student studying at an academy with jousting as its main focus for sport. Takahiro acts as an advisor to the riders of the sport. Takahiro goes through each day tediously until the time of the annual competition draws near. Due to some odd circumstances, his childhood friend Kisaki Mio is enrolled into the competition. She has never even ridden a horse before in her life, and Takahiro senses the fear in his friend and becomes Mio's coach. Wikipedia
Mizuno Takahiro
Once a prominent talent as a knight in the junior championships, an injury and defeat caused him to leave the scene. Though not fully able to abandon the path of jousting and his love for horses, he studies at Wynn Ford Academy as a begleiter. His former experience and talent as a knight makes him a desirable begleiter to many aspiring knights.
Celia Cumani Aintree
Celia was the winner of the jousting competitions during both her first and second year at the academy and is regarded as a prodigy in jousting. Celia also has excellent grades and has been the president of the student council for consecutive years.
Kisaki Mio
A second-year and friend of Takahiro’s who lives quite close to him. Mio enjoys watching jousting competitions and strongly believes that Takahiro will eventually recover from his injury and return to competing.Mio is good at housework, but she insists on experimenting with her cooking, which always ends in disaster.
Lisa Eostre
A first-year student at the academy but is regarded as a very promising rookie. No one in the first-year class is able to stand up to her.However, Lisa is rather bad at socializing and ends usually being a blunt taciturn.
Noel Marres Ascot
Daughter of a marquess family, her jousting skills are top-class. Noel puts in all she has got into the competitions because she promised her younger sister that she would never lose when she is competing in front of her.
Even before the current project, there had been attempts to translate Walkure Romanze since around 2014. In June 2013, a blog popped out of nowhere for the fan translation group Wakarimashita Team, a team dedicated to translate this title. However, it was clear from the start that they didn’t have a solid plan nor staff, so they started off with multiple recruitment lists for different positions.
Uncharacteristically fast, after opening a thread on old Fuwanovel, they found some new staff and could achieve 25% translation by the end of that year. By May 2014, their team already went through several team member changes that also included leadership, besides purges for inactive members.
By 2015, the project was as good as dead, with the remaining member and frequent update poster Derpigreg being the only person left on the project.
But even here he didn’t give up and was determined to bring the project to its end, all by his lonesome. His enthusiasm didn’t last long, so by March 4th there was already a new thread created on Fuwanovel with a desperate plea for support. Some forum members were quite eager to help him, but communication kept being sparce and thus nothing progressed or was reformed at all. On September 5th, another former team member with access to the script said on the forums that they would give it out to a suitable person willing to go forward. Unfortunately, Fuwanovel’s activity kept regressing around that time and when deprigreg finally returned in 2018, barely anyone was left to see it.
The last update announcing the death of the project was posted on October 21st, 2018.
It is difficult to reconstruct the history behind the modern patch project for Walkure Romanze because “that anonymous moege translator,” the leader behind the project, acted in utmost secrecy and had only left inconspicuous hints to “jousting” in random threads to announce progress on the project. We can roughly date the launch back to early 2022, right after the completion of NTR Homestay (we actually have a review on it, so check it out!) The rest we can somehow retrace due to readily made VNDB updates.
In August 2022, a patch for the common route had been uploaded anonymously to MEGA. Five months later, the Celia Route was the next to follow and not even a month later, the full Lisa Route. Updates to the full patch came out somewhat frequently and the general version number was now 1.01, superceding the 1.0. patch. Jump forward to March 2023 and the Mio route was added in.
By August 18th 2023, this happened!
Here, you may read it in full:
Why hello there! I doubt anyone would check in here to see any updates and whatsoever. But if you do, thank you. It’s been 5 years since the last post. I’ve never thought I was able to get back in here to be honest. To the team who has finished the project, congratulations! I’ve never felt so relieved and nostalgic to see it finish. Looking back here, its nice to look back the mess we’ve done. Yes I still do have the files, it’s stuck in my google drive. However, I would like to take this chance to formally apologize for the obvious lack of progress and the complete absence. As a highschooler leading the project when it started, I am amazed and humbled by the opportunity given to lead a fan translation group. Admittedly, I failed and messed up. I thought I assembled a nice team to get things done and slowly work on things. I suppose it was my mistake to be completely reliable on strangers who I am not too sure if I could hold account to their workload, but then again why so harsh to myself? It was a non-funded fan translation project after all. Slowly and eventually, I guess I caved into pressure after hearing many rumours and shit talk going on in 4chan… I guess I slowly lost motivation in doing it. After all, i have better things to do. Oh well, at least I ahve something to look back at. Weird memories that I could talk about. Well this is derpigreg here. It was fun and thank you for believing in us somewhat. Go enjoy the VN, I love it a lot. Personally, I have finished it on my own and you can’t convince me otherwise that Celia is best girl. She just simply is. If anyone wants to know what I’m doing these days, I am actually pretty active… As a vtuber. If you’re gonna find me, good luck! I doubt it’s gonna be hard to be honest.
Well, and in fact, he did show up quite quickly in the comments below the post — his name nowadays is Rei Peiron. Check out his content!
If you enjoy our work, please follow us on Twitter for more visual novel news and join the community in our forums and discord server: we’re pretty active there!
In addition, you can also support us on Patreon or by buying us a Ko-fi.
