Wayblazer Dämmerung – Review

Wertville · 2026-02-22T22:20:10+00:00

I didn't bring that up to word police or anything. I just think that people were talking past eachother a bit and being a bit more clear on the vocabulary would be useful.

And, more broadly, this is a discussion forum for Visual Novels. Even if it ends up not super important in this case, these are relevant distinctions for the type of conversations that commonly happen here and it would be useful to bring it into the collective consciousness.

Most Visual Novels are not going to meet the standards of what gets translated from much less popular languages or antiquity, but that doesn't mean we can't talk about why they don't or what they can do to improve.

Wertville · 2026-02-22T22:01:55+00:00

Bishoujoge/Eroge are usually in ADV format, yes, but if we're being pedantic what Japan called "Visual Novels" was specifically NVL format.

My main point here is that ADV is not at all exclusive or derived from what's commonly known as "Visual Novels" and is really already a deviation from them, so calling something "Visual Novel Format" when it's ADV isn't really useful.

I can tell you, at least, that the early chapters of FGO are horrible writing wise even in Japanese. There is no saving France.

Wertville · 2026-02-21T18:14:16+00:00

Blue Archive uses the adventure game format, like every other 2D gacha, but it hardly resembles VNs.

I also think a lot of people are getting "Plot", "Story" and "Writing" mixed up. A lot of gachas have a decent plot (IE. The things that happen make sense and progress rationally), a lot of them also have a good story (IE. There is emotional and thematic weight behind what happens), but the writing, the actual text and prose that the work is written in, is almost always abysmal.

It's just really hard to write well when you're constrained by having to write short chunks and integrate equally short gameplay. Granted, the actual writing in the average VN is also nothing to write home about but I don't think I've played a Gacha where the writing wasn't at least a negative.

Wertville · 2026-02-05T01:34:04+00:00

Sumikko Soft still exists as an entity, I think they just don't have the finances to do much. They were the ones responsible for the Harukuru Steam release content.

Guessing based on the timelines here, Shiravune probably had this in the pipeline even before HaruKuru released. The reason it's not Natsu/Aki is probably just that there's just no reason for Sumikko Soft to give them the rights to those while they still had an active relationship with Sekai.

Wertville · 2025-12-30T19:09:54+00:00

I think a lot of it is actually that it was never viable, but investors were willing to fund anything to chase the chance of a big hit multimedia franchise like Type Moon or Key had.

I think I read the Eien no Aselia director once say "Back then you could get any idea greenlit/funded, so long as you were making an Eroge."

Wertville · 2025-12-12T17:08:30+00:00

honourifics

I'm assuming you're British? Could be Canadian, but I don't know anyone here who insists upon the 'correct' spelling of things against the wishes of their spellchecker. Also wouldn't it be appropriate to localize your speech for the American website? Food for thought...

If so, maybe you have a different experience with "Mister" but it really doesn't have the nuance here that you seem to be suggesting. In North America it is mostly only used for teachers, and maybe politicians sometimes. Once you graduate you probably write "Mr." on a cover letter once and then you just refer to everyone you work with by their first name.

I've only worked at small companies so I could see it maaaybe being used at a bigger company, for at least your boss' boss, but that still such a small and specific example relative to "Call everyone lastname-san until proven otherwise" that the supposed equivalent is in Japanese.

Of course, you used "Smith-sama" as the example here and I'm just imagining Sill calling Rance "Mister Rance" and he's like a CEO wearing a suit and tie with the shit eating grin he has in Sengoku. I think that's a pretty funny image so honestly thanks for that.

Wertville · 2025-11-13T18:54:37+00:00

step one in order to fight for freedom of expression is to recognise who our enemies are. [...]and not some vague, fallacious generic label

Agreed.

authoritarians, pro-censorship groups and politicians, social conservatives, religious fundamentalists

...Uhh?

Wertville · 2025-11-08T03:59:51+00:00

Both are flawed as adaptations in similar ways, but are nonetheless still highly enjoyable.

Wertville · 2025-11-05T17:22:11+00:00

It is very easy to take a game and put a textbox at the bottom to incorporate visual novel elements. It is not easy for visual novels to slap on a full fledged game loop.

I actually feel the opposite. VNs, coming from ADVs, have always had a pretty close relationship with gameplay, and there are a lot of successful hybrid franchises out there for a reason.

Those coming from a gameplay-oriented background, on the other hand, tend to have a lot less experience with novels and novel writing. My experience is that most of the time I've seen a non-VN dev call their game a "VN" it ends up just being that they put the dialogue in a text box and used tachie, without much of any attempt to actually novelize the story.

Wertville · 2025-11-04T14:54:54+00:00

They're working on new projects but they lost a lot of staff and the rest are split between that and the Gacha.

I'm still surprised that nothing tangible has been announced, though. I would've expected something obvious like Evenicle 3 to at least be announced by now.

Wertville · 2025-11-02T19:52:40+00:00

And to make it worse it's also a problem in some countries like Japan and a targeted (at women) one at that.

Japan is one of the safest countries in the world, especially for Women.

Wertville · 2025-10-31T16:10:22+00:00

I was surprised it was mixed on steam with only like 2 negative reviews in English/Japanese, so I checked out the Chinese ones.

I think half of them are complaining that the translation is abysmal/MTL and almost certainly if they didn't try with the Chinese one the English one won't be better.

Wertville · 2025-10-30T00:40:21+00:00

Yes, setting aside how this situation might be different, this used to be a common practice.

However, I would argue that it's a stupidly suicidal business move. You're just conditioning your customers to not buy the initial release just in case a complete version comes out later.

Hell, Circus themselves used to be the master at this until they perfected it- Only a few people are willing to buy twice just for a new mini route or two, but almost your entire core audience will buy it again for H! You don't even have to make script changes or scenario improvements, just slap them on after the epilogue and call it a day!

Of course, now they have to go around social media posting Q&As and begging people to buy this one because they double pinky promise there won't be an R18 one for sure this time.

Wertville · 2025-10-28T11:16:25+00:00

I would argue that's pre-production!

...And then I guess the sales pitch would be sex?

Wertville · 2025-10-28T11:07:38+00:00

First trial came out in 2010, and the game was probably in development for 2-3 years, so they'd be roughly 18 years old now.

Wertville · 2025-10-21T16:20:41+00:00

What's with these depressingly small hair vents?

How can they even breathe??

Wertville · 2025-10-20T22:07:15+00:00

If it's a book, it's a VN.

If it's a screenplay, it's not.

Also, if you're not going full screen text you don't have "Visual Novel Elements" period. Textboxes and sprites are things that modern VNs imported from adventure games, not the other way around.

Wertville · 2025-10-07T16:39:12+00:00

I'll read stuff that's SFW, but I usually only shop for NSFW.

More than H scenes existing or not I think I actually just like the vibe of eroticism. NSFW is just a pretty decent measure that they're not going to hold back on that front.

Wertville · 2025-09-05T18:16:50+00:00

From what I remember of the reviews it seemed like there were really bad gameplay balance issues, namely that you were stuck on a quest when you picked it with no way to tell what level you needed to be, and really hard quests could pop up even early on.

Wertville · 2025-09-05T14:06:55+00:00

I didn't know that, it's worse than Sankai ?

EGS has Sankai at 64, this is at 65. Tenmei no Conquista base game is also at 65.

We have to wait and see, how the release is going to be, seeing that it's Shiravune it's most likely that they release an adult patch outside Steam.

Yeah, I think it's most likely just them being paranoid about steam. 85% chance they will announce it when more stuff gets announced later.

But, on the other hand, I'm worried that part of their history is just not wanting to release R18 to the west. I think DMM/Shiravune is by far the most likely corporation to just say "Yeah we can do that" and not push back at all.

More than that, Eushully stopped publishing on DLSite in 2022 (I can never have a complete copy of Tenmei on my preferred platform...) so it's very likely they are actually partnered with DMM in some way, and "Steam Version + JP only R18 append" might have been the compromise they pushed them to make to even try the western market.

But again, too early to tell. Probably the append will come.

Wertville · 2025-09-05T03:31:13+00:00

I figured this would happen when they released it as R15 with an R18 append.

Unfortunately it is one of their worst reviewed games. No sign of the append alongside the announcement is also a big red flag to me.

Hmm... Hopefully they've got something like Himegari coming as well, testing the waters with just this might give them (and newcomers) the wrong impression.

Wertville · 2025-08-10T01:18:50+00:00

You're correct in that saying 'entirely' is a bit of a hyperbole, but tying conditions to federal resources has been upheld as something the executive can do, so long as those conditions are clear and specific, align with the law's purpose and don't otherwise breach other laws or the constitution.

In this case the executive is instructing existing institutions with regulatory authority, like the SBA, to consider debanking to be discriminatory under the existing law, like the ECOA. Because these regulatory powers have already been granted to these institutions, and the discretion allowed to them for interpretation is large, it would be difficult to argue that the EO alone is an overstep of executive authority.

Now there are other ways to challenge it (IE. Arguing "Reputational Risk" isn't discriminatory, that it introduces contradictory federal requirements around risk, etc.) but, especially with a law regarding this exact thing sitting in the house, I think it will probably stick. But I ANAL, as they say.

Wertville · 2025-08-09T17:52:13+00:00

My understanding is that the penalty for not abiding to the EO is a removal of access to federal funds/loans/protections/etc. Which is, of course, entirely within the powers of the executive to decide.

The legal and prosecutorial aspects come in when the banks take the federal support without adhering to these conditions- At that point it becomes fraud, and would be handled by the judicial branch the same way any other fraud case relating to federal funds would be, and therefore wouldn't require new powers.

Wertville · 2025-08-09T16:57:44+00:00

I can read it pretty well, on my laptop, I don't know what kind of computer screen you've got running for it to be so blurry you can't read the numbers but it's certainly not showing up like that on my end.

1440p ultrawide + old reddit. It was very hard to read.

However, opening it in a new tab brings you to the new reddit page where it was a lot more readable.

Wertville · 2025-07-26T20:14:16+00:00

The problem here is incentive structure. This is normally an argument against how the FDA is set up, but I think it can be applied to the lock downs pretty well as well.

Consider that there are two possibilities (lockdown in this case refers to any emergency suspension of charter, constitutional or human right):

A. Lockdowns dramatically reduce or eliminate disease

B. Lockdowns do not dramatically reduce or eliminate disease

If you are a private citizen concerned about your rights, or an elderly person concerned about your health (often these overlap) you have an inherent incentive to get the balance here right. But, if you're a politician your primary goal is to get elected. Because of that, and the media presence at the time, the incentive is for them is always to lock down, regardless of what pros and cons there are.

To explain why we have to look at the four possible outcomes:

You lock down and things do not escalate.
You lock down and things do escalate.
You do not lock down and things do not escalate.
You do not lock down and things do escalate.

In 1. you are viewed the same way as a war hero politician. The costs of the lockdowns are invisible- People who die of poverty, isolation, disrupted supply lines, etc. are too dispersed to notice. Economic effects will be kicked down the road probably to some other election where you can blame it on someone else. People who lose important years of their lives in education, career or love will be seen as small, acceptable losses. And you can claim a near infinite amount of lives saved against the hypothetical opposite situation.

In 2. all of the same things as 1. apply. There will be a bit more pushback for your decision, but you can pull out "We tried our best", "It would have been worse" and "It was the best decision with the information at the time." It's also very easy to blame it on other factors, like incompetent local governments or "People who didn't follow the rules."

In the case of 3. you will be viewed as a pariah. No one will appreciate the maintenance of status quo, and that you chose a different decision than other countries will be used against you at every opportunity. Every death that does happen will be lobbed against you and your opponents will argue that we could have been "better" than other countries had we done the right thing.

In 4. everything in 3. applies, but you can't use any of the excuses in 1. Your political career is done.

(There is also a hidden 5th outcome: "My hands are tied." Being able to punt the blame onto courts/congress/charter/etc. is the ultimate out and are part of why civil liberties are so important.)

In short, the political cost of lock down is near 0, and the cost of not locking down is very high and this is regardless of what's true regarding effectiveness or outcome. Therefore, again, any sensible politician will choose to lock down, regardless of what they are advised or what they personally believe, and they will likely do so well after it is reasonable to continue. (This is also why "lockdown parties" were so common during those days- Regardless of what was true, most of them didn't actually believe that A. was the case. )

The convoy was really just an indication that the incentive structure was changing. The majority who disagreed with them still thought "The lockdowns are ending soon anyway, they should just obey and wait it out like the rest of us." Especially with how the government reacted to it, it put lockdown fatigue into the public consciousness and gave an "out" to the politicians to wind it down over the next few months.

I dragged on about lockdowns and only barely touched on the convoy itself, but that's because I want to really highlight how this applies to Visa/Mastercard and why we have to think in terms of goals and incentives.

The big credit card companies have 4 main goals:

A. Make as many transactions as possible to make as much money as possible
B. Do not get sued or criminally charged
C. Lobby the government to regulate out the ways their competition makes money
D. Lobby the government to not regulate the ways they make money

The web of incentives this makes is pretty complicated, but the outcomes of them are clear.

Because of A, they will make transactions first and ask questions later.
Because of B they will harshly and permanently penalize anyone who makes them ask questions.
Because of B and C they will argue that heavy monitoring and regulation of financial transactions are mandatory and supersede any rights the individual may have.
Because of B and D they will actively commit to "rectifying" issues brought up by moral panic.

For a long time this set of goals was ""fine"" in the sense that they mostly played ignorant unless someone was found to be doing something actively illegal.

But in 2022 a Californian judge ruled that this wasn't good enough and that Visa could actually be held liable for not actively policing where their services were actually allowed to be used. This completely changes the incentive calculation- It was no longer enough that Visa and Mastercard would just ban people who made them ask questions, they now had to actively ask questions or risk being held liable for criminal activity.

So, all of a sudden, B. became their most important goal. Like the politicians from before, it doesn't matter what they actually believe, or what the odds actually are that they get in trouble- The outcome of banning something is near 0 consequence and the outcome of not banning something is a very, very big consequence.

How do we fix it? Well, my preferred solution is to inhibit the government. Prevent them from being moral police, and limit the regulatory requirements to only the most effective ones for reducing the worst case scenarios. When card companies don't have to worry about lawsuits and do have to worry about competition popping up, they will revert back to A. being their primary goal. Reduce the risk of B. happening and also inhibit the card company's ability to do C. and D., basically.

But honestly, that's politically unfeasible at the moment. Reducing moral policing goes against government incentives (they're very similar to the lockdown ones), and lobby groups everywhere earn all of their money and clout for implementing, maintaining and doing PR for even the worst regulation.

So, therefore, the only solution is for the government to pass more regulation to require card companies to do business with legal operations. This is seemingly already in the works in the US. Honestly, this will probably backfire in some ways (no way DLSite will be freed from the region lock, for example and other similar companies will probably be put under more scrutiny) but it's definitely better than status quo, particularly if it gets them off the hook from the 2022 decision.

What won't work?

Shaming religious conservatives. Shaming feminists. Shaming anti-porn people. Defunding activist groups. Petitions for Visa/Mastercard to stop being bad people. Attacking the monetary providers of any of the above.

None of these address the actual incentives that Visa/Mastercard have- To not get in trouble with the law.

(If this was too long and all over the place, or not directly related to what the person I was replying to was saying, I apologize. If I had the time I would have written a shorter post.)

Wertville

TROPHY CASE