Technically not, technically it would be copyright infringement and whatever punishment the developer doing it gets is dependent on the country of the developer that did it. However, with VNs, you don't see a whole lot of enforcement, so they are relatively safe from getting in trouble.
- Dec 15, 2018
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So I understand what people mean by this gaming having a lot of potential, but it has a shit ton of technical and fundamental issues that I want to point out. mainly to get off my chest, because god knows the dev won't read this, and probably anyone else here either.
First the technical. I understand the dev doesn't speak english, but this machine translation is easily the worst I've ever seen most of the text is legible, but some scenes make no sense with the translation, some words (and scenes) are completely untranslated, and many of the translated words feel wrong (we'll talk more about wording later). On top of this, the game is buggy, really buggy. I needed help from this forum to even join the Occult club because it crashes the game, many scenes have parts that don't work, the character name gets replaced with the default basically the first time its said because of an error, the list goes on. to even consider paying money for this these issues would need to get fixed.
Now the fundamental (this is gonna get long)
The game is having an identity crisis. on one hand, the game is a good school sim, being able to interact and get into a relationship with every NPC as well as having an abundance of events for those NPCs. out of my time playing, just getting to know the relationship system and dating a few NPCs was some of the most fun. I wish some systems were expanded (other relationships with the MC instead of just hate and love. Specifically Mindbreak, seeing that you are able to force a NPC to blow you after you beat them, and they like it, then it goes nowhere sucks) but as it is, it works, even though it feels like an inferior version of HHS+. The other game is a dating sim, the only interaction these systems have with each other is that Yoshida will break up with you and hate you if you are dating someone else. There are times you need to talk to NPCs, like recruiting for the occult club, or getting people to vote for Yuki, but that's all. The NPC count could be 10 and the game wouldn't really change. I believe the devs needs to either separate these and build them into their own games, or merge them much better than current.
The writing is bland, and really wordy. The writing for even the scenes had a hard time catching my attention because it doesn't feel like it has enough life to be interesting (this isn't helped by the poor translation) and the parts that I did read thoroughly felt like a academic scholar ate a dictionary and started writing. This also isn't getting into the 4D chess the main character and the Student Council/Journalism club play that doesn't fit at all for what should be a highschool. I know I'm american, and we're pretty stupid, but the coverup for Meiko's mindbreak route is so advanced and convoluted there is no way highschoolers could have done it. The games writing needs to have more life breathed into it, and the plot needs to be believable, right now its not really able to do either of those.
The dating sim part, simply doesn't sit right with me. the quest log is very vague and looking at "you don't have any tasks assigned by this character" while having done everything I can think of, an amazing relationship with them, and still not having the gallery done very much rubs me the wrong way. I personally want a walkthrough for this game because of all the decisions there are and I don't want to replay this game to see if I fucked up (like how choosing the romance route for Meiko makes her basically disappear, but following her quest line after enslaving her also makes her disappear but in a significantly worse fashion. that route made me feel like shit and was well done). The characters affect each other in very implicit ways, and I want a way to see if something I did block something else off. The game already has some of this system, giving occasional hints that a choice will have a specific effect, but I personally want to know more about the decision I made so I don't have to save scum as much. All in all, I feel that the quest log needs to give more and better hints about what you need to do to progress the character path and important decisions should hint at their consequences, especially if they aren't explicit.
This game has some good ideas and potential, the UI while clunky, works really well, the setting is well done and makes sense, most of the customization I also really like, and the fighting system fits the game well. That doesn't excuse the issues though. It would take a lot of work to fix, but I think with focusing on fixing the current content instead of expanding this game could be really good.
First the technical. I understand the dev doesn't speak english, but this machine translation is easily the worst I've ever seen most of the text is legible, but some scenes make no sense with the translation, some words (and scenes) are completely untranslated, and many of the translated words feel wrong (we'll talk more about wording later). On top of this, the game is buggy, really buggy. I needed help from this forum to even join the Occult club because it crashes the game, many scenes have parts that don't work, the character name gets replaced with the default basically the first time its said because of an error, the list goes on. to even consider paying money for this these issues would need to get fixed.
Now the fundamental (this is gonna get long)
The game is having an identity crisis. on one hand, the game is a good school sim, being able to interact and get into a relationship with every NPC as well as having an abundance of events for those NPCs. out of my time playing, just getting to know the relationship system and dating a few NPCs was some of the most fun. I wish some systems were expanded (other relationships with the MC instead of just hate and love. Specifically Mindbreak, seeing that you are able to force a NPC to blow you after you beat them, and they like it, then it goes nowhere sucks) but as it is, it works, even though it feels like an inferior version of HHS+. The other game is a dating sim, the only interaction these systems have with each other is that Yoshida will break up with you and hate you if you are dating someone else. There are times you need to talk to NPCs, like recruiting for the occult club, or getting people to vote for Yuki, but that's all. The NPC count could be 10 and the game wouldn't really change. I believe the devs needs to either separate these and build them into their own games, or merge them much better than current.
The writing is bland, and really wordy. The writing for even the scenes had a hard time catching my attention because it doesn't feel like it has enough life to be interesting (this isn't helped by the poor translation) and the parts that I did read thoroughly felt like a academic scholar ate a dictionary and started writing. This also isn't getting into the 4D chess the main character and the Student Council/Journalism club play that doesn't fit at all for what should be a highschool. I know I'm american, and we're pretty stupid, but the coverup for Meiko's mindbreak route is so advanced and convoluted there is no way highschoolers could have done it. The games writing needs to have more life breathed into it, and the plot needs to be believable, right now its not really able to do either of those.
The dating sim part, simply doesn't sit right with me. the quest log is very vague and looking at "you don't have any tasks assigned by this character" while having done everything I can think of, an amazing relationship with them, and still not having the gallery done very much rubs me the wrong way. I personally want a walkthrough for this game because of all the decisions there are and I don't want to replay this game to see if I fucked up (like how choosing the romance route for Meiko makes her basically disappear, but following her quest line after enslaving her also makes her disappear but in a significantly worse fashion. that route made me feel like shit and was well done). The characters affect each other in very implicit ways, and I want a way to see if something I did block something else off. The game already has some of this system, giving occasional hints that a choice will have a specific effect, but I personally want to know more about the decision I made so I don't have to save scum as much. All in all, I feel that the quest log needs to give more and better hints about what you need to do to progress the character path and important decisions should hint at their consequences, especially if they aren't explicit.
This game has some good ideas and potential, the UI while clunky, works really well, the setting is well done and makes sense, most of the customization I also really like, and the fighting system fits the game well. That doesn't excuse the issues though. It would take a lot of work to fix, but I think with focusing on fixing the current content instead of expanding this game could be really good.
To be fair on the machine, Russian is already a complicated language for human translation, but you are right, it can be bad at times when things are translated at all, as you pointed out, there is still Cyrillic script at times, including entire sections of Yuki's park scenes, that makes it impossible for non-Cyrillic readers to read. Then, when things do get translated, there is an issue with wording, the game's English is FAR too formal, it reads like a business letter from a company to one of their employees talking about official business, not like a game. I agree that it needs more life breathed into it, though I'm not sure believable was ever doable in a game like this, it was already pretty unbelievable that you are in this whole situation with any of the plot, same with HHS+, I just don't think a more realistic approach would work in a game like this.
I cannot say this enough, the bugs are horrendous and you STILL cannot go buy clothing without possibly getting an error that, when ignored, sends you back to the main menu. This is the first and only Renpy game I have ever seen with this behavior towards ignoring errors and it is a VERY big problem because an unsuspecting player can lose real world hours of progress just by making the mistake of trying to ignore those errors. Bugs need to be an absolute top priority until there is a truly stable build.
With the "identity crisis" section, I don't think they should be separated, just improved. You compared it to HHS+, which has a similar setup to this game in that there are random NPCs you can do whatever with and then there are story NPCs that you have to follow the story of to get to, though none of these disappear if you complete their story in any possible way. I actually like the fact that Yoshida responds to the fact that you are dating other girls even if it is one of the random NPCs, this is one thing this game does better than HHS+ since every single character in HHS+ is more accepting and can't really break up with you over cheating like the girls in this game can. It adds a touch of realism that makes it more challenging to try and maintain a harem, even if it is annoying that they can come at you an infinite number of times over the same target girl. That is my only complaint, they need to be limited to coming at you one time per target character because it makes no sense the same girl can come at you about the same target girl you literally just denied dating the day before or however long it takes her to repeat the encounter. In fact, my problem with Yoshida is that she is the ONLY story girl that can do this, the others should be able to confront and break up with the player if they should discover cheating and the player is not able to successfully deny it or maybe the confrontation can result in them, or random NPCs, acknowledging your other relationships in a positive way, accepting that they are either the main or a side girl to this other character or that they are in a harem with equal status to every other girl in the harem. That is something HHS+ also does not do, even with the accepting nature of current HHS+, the game does not acknowledge there are multiple girls dating the NPC who all know they aren't the only one.
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- Dec 15, 2018
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I didn't know about the issues with translating Cyrillic, I personally don't have any translation experience and the only translation I've been exposed to is professionally done for other games or machine translation for Japanese. now knowing this problem it makes the translation a bit more forgivable.
I again agree with what you said about the bugs in this game. for other Ren'py games I've played, when the developer has a bug reported, they fix it. For this game there is no way the developer isn't running into their own bugs, so why aren't they fixing it? I can only think of one reason and It might be a stretch. All of the files and crash logs are in English. I don't think a game that was built in Russian would have all the files in English natively, which means something was translated, there is a chance this something is why some of the bugs occur. It's just a theory however.
On your last point. You're right, I would prefer them to improve the system (I think I mentioned that as an option, but I might be mistaken). I wish there was a way to convince Yoshida to accept being part of a Harem to counter the issue entirely, especially since she is the only character who cares that she isn't the only one. If more characters cared and would confront you about it I don't think the issue would be as bad, but the way it currently is, she is just harassing you.
Yeah, Russian has something like six forms to a word that depend entirely on context, which is something machines know nothing about. They can do the translations fine with no context, but there is no difference between one context and another to a machine, so they would make the translation based on the one way they know the word. Japanese, which has fewer forms to each word, is also extremely context heavy, which makes it just as difficult for a machine to translate if not more difficult because context is the problem here.
I do see Sloths Command fixing their bugs, the only one I have yet to see fixed is when interacting with the clothing shop to buy clothes and that happens to be the biggest bug in the game so far because it sends any player that hits ignore back to the main menu, making it game breaking. Now, with severity comes complication, so I can see this taking a long time to fix because of how severe it is. You do have a point with the translation idea, I have seen entire games break down over something as simple as a translated variable with translated Japanese games. If the game is looking for a variable in Cyrillic that got translated to English, the game WILL see that the variable is not there because it got translated. The English version of that variable is effectively a different variable entirely as far as Renpy, an engine that throws fits over capitalization in English even with the same variable, is concerned.
That third part brings up an excellent idea I have never seen in any game, when ANY girl confronts the player about cheating, propose the idea of a harem as a middle ground to counter the situation. Now obviously this an absolutely terrible idea realistically as that is one of the easiest ways to get slapped by a girl, but realism isn't entirely necessary in a game. With HHS+, you can already consider every girl or guy accepting the harem idea right out of the gate, they NEVER come confront you about cheating. This would be one way to put this game ahead of HHS+, and make no mistake, they are technically competitors for the same market of people.
I dunno if it's the machine translation or not but my god it really makes the MC sound like a highly charismatic asshole and all the main cast girls just eat the shit that he spews at them.
The MC actually CAN be a highly charismatic asshole if you set him up right, but yeah, it is mostly the machine in game. The translation is far too formal, which makes it sound like some upper class noble in a medieval town is talking constant trash that his subjects are gobbling up like candy, or if you set him up NOT to be a charismatic asshole, like some business letter.
I have the .931a update here. Can confirm that cheats don't work anymore. I can't seem to start the game without a patreon code though I did buy this on itch...
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- Dec 15, 2018
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Another large bug I don't see people mentioning (I don't really talk about because its beneficial) is that you can give yourself infinite stats with the auto generate. It gives you more stats than the game would normally, and doesn't take all of them away when you generate again. With this method you can start on day 1 with over 100 in every category. I also personally consider the name bug to be pretty immersion breaking, suddenly becoming someone else is really odd for me and it messes with how I enjoy the story. I believe you when you say that you've seen Sloth Command fix their game, but that just makes me shiver considering the number of errors and bugs I encountered playing the game for the little time I have.
On your last point, Really? HHS+ and the NPCs in this game let you have a Lowkey harem, they don't interact with each other much at all, are all devoted to you, and don't care if you are dating other girls (with the exception of Yoshida who the idea was for). As far as I'm concerned the only ones who don't realize they're in a harem are those who don't notice I have a girl home everyday lol. It would be nice to make it official though, because even if no one says anything, and the MC doesn't have an issue with it, it is technically still cheating through omission.
I'll agree with you that this would technically be a competitor to HHS+, but it's like Linux is a competitor to Windows, this game has things that HSS+ doesn't, however, HHS+ has much more and it's better.
I was afraid they would go even further, how unfortunate that they seem to not think game breaking bugs are more important.
I didn't even know you could, nice, though they may eventually find and patch it.
HHS+ NPCs say nothing about dating basically the entire town, this game's NPCs will hound you repeatedly if you are even dating one other character. I actually like this game's version better, just without the same girl hounding you over the same other girl multiple times, it should be one time and then she basically leaves you alone about that other girl.
In russian it's same same.
I was surprised when read your post. Playing for the first time, I thought that is Google translate from english.
(IMHO) I think it's a Japanese game, all the backgrounds and story are Japanese. And it was poorly translated and even worse adapted.
Same game, but in a language that is largely only found in a specific region of the planet that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, a language that is unlikely to be understood outside that geographical region by anyone who didn't come from there or go out of their way to learn it. Also, the backgrounds are all Japanese because they come from Japanese VNs, just like the story characters.
- Mar 2, 2020
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At the moment, 70 percent of the backgrounds are the work of the game's artists. They weren't stolen.
That leaves the other 30%, like the occult club background, should have made it clear that when I said "all Japanese" I was referencing exactly what ZV said above me, I did not mean to imply that they are 100% from other games.
- Mar 2, 2020
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Okay, anyway soon and these 30 percent will be the production of the game. Together with the plot characters. This was also announced by the developers.
I thought they would be, I mean the random NPCs are all original, so why wouldn't they make the rest.
One question. In your opinion, in what language are written the dialogues of the game?
I don't know about 70 percent, but all the main girls are borrowed along with the backgrounds.
Who likes Meiko Tsucasa +galery & video:
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Who likes Hitomi Watanabe, Azumi, ??? journalism club prtsident +galery & video on page:
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Who likes Ishida Ayano, Suzuki Matsui +galery & video on page:
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That’s OK )))
For the other games used for story characters and some backgrounds:
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EDIT:
For anyone that can manage to get archive.rpa unpacked:
home_ayano1 is an image I have seen used in multiple other games, such as Glassix.
club_ut is the one that I got a hit on SauceNao
Could not get it extracted, tried multiple RPA programs and even Unren, I'm using an RPA viewer online.
NOTE: Not all backgrounds are from another game, that was my mistake in not being clear about that.
The main language is one of the Slavic family of languages, F95 lists it as Russian, but I am not familiar enough with the Cyrillic alphabet to be able to tell the different Slavic languages apart. For all I know, it could be Ukrainian, which has only minor differences from Russian based on my own research.
Japanese does not use the Cyrillic alphabet, it uses its own systems of writing which, if it was in this game, I could identify easily as Japanese because there is only one language that uses Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji, the elements of the Japanese writing system, and I have been studying that for about a year and a half now.
There is definitely English in the game as well, which I would hope I could tell apart from other languages since that is my native language, but the English is almost completely, if not completely, machine translated.
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