After receiving a surprising amount of votes on the poll I did the other day to test which one of the big four has been, after all, the most desired visual novel in the west (or at least my twitter followers) I got an urge to try out more titles to see how the community sees them, which made me recall the exciting gamefaqs “Best Game of All Time” tournament.
I picked 52 most highly regarded titles that I could think of (mostly with the help of erogamescape) that have yet to receive a translation. Anyway, I wouldn’t mind translating most of these games, so show me which ones would you’d rather want me to push for (your vote might count for more than you think).
*Note: Type-Moon games seem to be incredibly popular in the west, so I felt it wouldn’t be fair to have Mahoyo and Fate/Extra CCC trample over everything in the tournament, and instead seeded them to an extra match where they’ll have a final bout against the winner of lesser known VNs (bracket update pending).
Excel file of the bracket for those who want to fill their own predictions: Bracket
The rules are simple: first we weed out some of the titles in group selection (kinda like football) where the two highest voted titles from the group shall go to the tournament bracket (I used bold font for the games that I would’ve voted for myself), and then we have 1×1 battles until we see which visual novel is, after all, the most desired in the west.
*I added the four biggest titles (Baldr Sky, Dies Irae, Muramasa, and White Album 2) directly to the bracket as seeded games, so they don’t tear the lesser guys apart right from the get-go.
Sad to see Megami Zero drop out, probably one of the best Eushully games out there. Shoud’ve included Madou Koukaku there too, world needed to know moar of Eushully’s greatness! ^^
Seems like Dies Irae will be winning in the end though.
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Won’t it up as a contest between Baldr Sky, Dies Irae, Muramasa and White Album 2 anyway?
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… that is what we expected, but Eustia won against White Album. I found it surprising, yet I was happy Eustia won.
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Why evenicle is cross out? WHYYYYY????
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Ah, by the way, it’s not that well known in the west, but I’ve heard that Sorcery Jokers is really good. Do you have any input about that?
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It’s pretty new and I haven’t read it, so I don’t know, but it’s rating on egs seems to be all right (not on top, but among the better games this year, it seems).
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where the hell is dracu-riot. Its a long long LONG awaited VN.
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It’s not that highly regarded in Japan, so I forgot about it. Might have added it if somebody had reminded me earlier. xD
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Is yuzusoft not that popular of a company in japan? I love their stuff.
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They’re popular enough, and a lot of their games are considered good, but not really, you know, great. At least none make it the top 100 of erogamescape。
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Fair enough.
Still though, in the west, we have been dieing for dracu-riots full translation.
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Yess! Maybe I will finally play Sekai de Ichiban dame na koi!
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>No Angel Beats
Okay.
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I didn’t want it to upset the rankings since the west has yet to learn it’s not very good. Apparently, it’s just like the anime.
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So you are implying that the anime wasn’t good? Besides, it’s more than just anime. Just look at Iwasawa route, for instance.
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Angel Beats 1st beat shouldn’t be included, because it’s incomplete. That would be like putting Leyline 1 in the tourney. For the record, I played through to the true end and loved it.
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HAHAHAHAHAH! neither the anime nor the novel deserve attention.
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That’s matter of opinion, and I don’t share your minority opinion~
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Oh my gawd. 5 Light VN in the tournament. Hopefully Dies Irae wins cause I’ve been waiting for it be translation for the longest. Plz make it happen. BTW I thought Mahoutsukai no Yoru was being translated by someone in BL. They already did Chapter 1-5 so far.
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Afaik, there are three fan-tl projects of that, and they’re all stalled or something. In any case, I’m including ongoing fan-tls since they’re not a sure thing.
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Wait, where has Aiyoku no Eustia suddenly disappeared to .__.
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It’s in group J.
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F is where true greatness awaits! having a hard time deciding on whom to give that vote of mine…
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Group K is like the group of death.
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Interesting. If you need help on something fantasy/chuuni just say so, lol.
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Thanks, but I’m trying to go with the most popular games that are either on top of vndb/egs or are being constantly talked about in English boards. Anything niche would fall off the bracket right away, so I had to contain myself from adding a few less popular titles I personally liked, too. 😦
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You might want to replace Irotoridori no Sekai, as it is getting a TL at this moment.
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I think Harumade, Kururu is getting a TL as well? In any case, fan-tls don’t seem to be a sure thing, so I thought it was still fine to include something that’s not 100% guaranteed to come out yet.
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Wouldn’t be better if poll is hosted on a website that doesn’t require registration?
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Are there people who don’t use twitter in this day and age? xD
In all seriousness, I think a lot more people can find my poll there, as there are a bunch of guys with loads of subs who keep re-tweeting me.
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I don’t actually. I also hardly use Facebook, and use it with an alias account that only my friends know. In terms of social networks, I’m pretty disconnected. Not sure if you can take this into consideration or not, but my vote is on Sayonara wo Oshiete. Recently read that and loved it. I really want to recommend it to some of my friends, but I can’t since they don’t know any Japanese.
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That’s nice, finally something to do on a daily basis. Would be nice if SP/MG retweet it, more votes = always better. I’m a bit sad that you didn’t include tone work’s “Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai” and probably “Mahoyo” since it’s got the best visuals I’ve ever seen. I think you could also add main game to “Irotoridori no Hikari”
On the other hand can’t wait for finale: “Muramasa” vs “Dies”
Still have hope that maybe “Baldr” will somehow win vs “Muramasa” but… it seems unlikely.
Wasn’t “KimiNozo” “confirmed” to come next after Muv-Luv? The “translation” already started.
http://www.siliconera.com/2015/10/30/koki-yoshimune-on-making-muv-luv-characters-lovable/
“However, either an English translation of Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien or its 2008 remake comes first.”
Groups C/H/I are the hardest for me. Group D seems to be the easiest.
Anyway, nice tournament. Will do my best to vote every time. And yeah, let’s hope for Giga to finally break and localize their games. The same goes for Light with their huge amount of high-quality titles.
Thanks for your hard work.
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Ah, right, the first game was called Irotoridori no Sekai, I mixed the names up (fixed now).
I didn’t know that about Muv-Luv. I thought it was an extended kickstarter goal that had been scrapped or something? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised after the success of that kickstarter.
Also, I tried to stick with games that either made it to top100 of egs or are already relatively hyped in English community (like Rui Tomo). Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai looks pretty nice, but not really exceptional from what I can see of JP player impressions (although the art does look amazing).
Edit: Actually, I decided to add Hoshi Ori Yume Mirai in the end, since other people seemed to mention it too (so I guess it qualifies as “hyped in the west”).
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Hey, check reddit PMs.
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Where is Undertale tho?
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so many good games T-T
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