So I wanna thank Screwthenoise

for this. I haven't played an illusion game in god knows how long besides Honey Select 1. Is there anything I need to know mod wise for this game before I start throwing in random mods from other websites. What translation does this game use, I know how community driven the games are so is anything machine translated in the game play portion of the game; is it using the Steam translation as a base?
On steam it says " The additional expansions (DLC) available in Japan are incompatible." So I should CLEARLY use Screwthenoise's version of game if I want the full experience since steam is most likely never going to get anything more besides the character creator right? I don't use the Studio function in this or Honey Select. Anything in particular I need to know in regards to sharing things between this and Honey Select 2?
If you're using my pack, you should be decently up to date, the most important changes since HS1 is:
- Clothing mods and such come as zipmods, DON'T extract them, place them in the mods folder as is.
- IPA is dead, and good riddance, the framework used for AIS is BepInEx, for you as a user, this basically means a less hacky experience, with the patching happening on runtime without the need to manually patch, and permanently change game files. The basic idea with modding using BepInEx is to modify the main game files as little as can possibly be done. Just start the game as normal, preferably through the launcher, initsetting, and you should be off all ready.
As for translation... My pack includes the steam translations in the JP game, so that should get you sorted, ofc if you're using the SR pack meant for the steam version, the steam translations already in that game will be used. The translation is rather good, all things considered, so you should be good on that front. Whatever isn't translated in the Steam version is a combo of machine translation and manually translated stuff... this mainly is visible with modded clothes and inside studio, but isn't all that noticable.
The disclaimer on steam stating " The additional expansions (DLC) available in Japan are incompatible." is... well... just a lie... they work perfectly well, though they aren't translated... (My SR pack adds all missing DLC) as the DLC currently is just clothing, that isn't a problem, but the next HS2 update, HoneySelect2 Libido DX, will include character types, also for AIS... that means that major dumps of text will be introduced and be really noticeable, and that one might even include changes to vanilla code for AIS, but time will tell... the JP version will absolutely support DX, the steam version is unknown at this point, so might still recommend using the JP version as it has everything that makes the Steam version special, and has guaranteed support for future updates etc.
About HS2... AIS and HS2 shares the same studio, so both characters and studio scenes can be shared between those games in either direction, and that's true of a lot of mods as well. Originally Illusion created some studio content exclusively for HS2 (Studio animations, studio maps etc) but as of R6 I ported those back to AIS, so interchangeability is pretty much 100% at this point. AIS also receives updates alongside HS2 these days, so it's pretty much a choice of which main game you want... the full fledged, but not perfectly realised, full-fledged game AIS, or the Brothel, just "Meet,Fuck&Leave Free-H", game HoneySelect2... basically whatever you want out of it.
Personally I much prefer to have a game in my game, flawed as it is, it's still a quite enjoyable experience for me.
Think that covers all of your questions, if not, I'll try to check back every so often to follow up on any further questions
(Do note, I recommend buying it on either steam or DMM/Fanza if you like the game. It's always good to support the devs

)