Alright, haven’t been reading much throughout the week, let’s see how far I can get during the weekend.
2 Likes
I’ve completely stopped using textractor in the favor of Luna Hook, no issues with that so far. 
3 Likes
Ready for you to come back having already finished it 
Thanks for mentioning Luna by the way! I forget I even have that one. It worked with less fuss, but I don’t have an add on for filtering out all the font color and alignment tags it gets the way I did on textractor, so my character count was even more messed up. Not a big deal, though.
Like I said my weekend time tends to be less but I read up to a very sensible stopping point luckily
Spoilers up to starting the 幕間
Things are moving fast, now. The story about him being a secret child of nobility really was every bit as much of a quick pretext as we had been told. Like I was saying, these characters are pretty introspective, so ヤコポ comments on how he’s going to bury his weak side and become someone untouchable, so this is a big leap into what he’ll become. Even moreso with the 領主’s last words echoing in his head.
Incredible image, but… hmm. So I was right about the attack on the 娼館 being planned and him being behind it. So ジェレン is so broken that she’s sort of just aimlessly cheerful about everything, huh. Willing to do any horrible thing and no longer really able to recognize it by any standard, just having fun doing whatever she does. I’m reserving thoughts as we work through this because her and the 領主 both show a sort of madness the world has driven them to, and ヤコポ is in his own way headed towards that too. Let’s see what this story wants to do with the madness concepts.
I guess 領主 becomes another character here that we don’t get any ounce of a sympathetic side to; dude is just cruel.
3 Likes
All of 幕間
It was really darkly funny to see someone do the whole Japanese deferential “I don’t want to say anything about other people’s preferences…” on the subject of being attracted to a 5 year old. Jesus christ the people in this game’s world.
Anyway I really like this section. I still find ジェレン’s mental state odd but I think they keep it essentially consistent. I like all the added character in the 3 stories by nameless people too, there are a lot of extra details that quickly characterize those people a lot, plus it makes the world feel larger seeing these little glimpses of other lives. The slaveowner woman especially, she was terrible, but a very accurate and amusing/frustrating type where she has to constantly remind you she’s not doing anything bad because she has compartmentalized beating slaves with nicer words. Then she gets mad one of them doesn’t get sad enough!
Anyway フランちゃん is still horrible but I quite liked getting a glimpse at this insane romance. Hearing his past and seeing how he interacts with ジェレン at least shows something more than the cackling evil, and on a personal level I think I just find these extremely messed up relationships like they have pretty interesting. This was all probably one of my favorite parts so far.
2 Likes
Didn’t get that far
I’ve caught up to introduction of ジネーヴラ. Might write something more in detail later, for now I’m just gonna praise both the visuals and the music.
It really is a rollecoaster though, and having the looming shadow of how it ends, it’s not an easy read both language wise and emotionally wise.
1 Like
I didn’t move at all since last message! Got sick, and I would rather read something light and easy, this doesn’t qualify so well 
but I’ll be back at some point!
2 Likes
Good progress though!
Oh no hope you feel better soon!
Spoilers up to mention of 人探し
So here we see how trying to manage all the tasks of holding political power grinds ヤコポ down bit by bit. I like his adviser’s character, crafty old man but he does open up when the topic of his family comes up and while he’s totally cynical and really wearing down ヤコポ’s humanity, he does seem good at the job and as far as I can tell is genuinely, in the myopic way he sees it anyway, working towards their mutual success.
When he makes this face I like to imagine it as an understated version of the winking, grinning anime girl pose. えへへ、領主ってば！
I think this author is really talented at showing specific in depth scenes to make this passing of time and change in characters flow well, the whole move from ヤコポ’s day 1 on the job to this point felt entirely natural.
3 Likes
Get well soon!
2 Likes
I think I have about 3-4 days to go maybe, depending on how much I manage in those sessions.
Spoilers, 教会
So, the majority of the big changes in the ヤコポ we know happen here. Happy to say I had a pretty good read on his political adviser, and it did occur to me that he might be getting poisoned here. Thus far the development makes a lot of sense; he went through 3 days of hell because he was betrayed by someone he viewed as such a close friend, and the ramifications went all the way to killing the old man he had gotten close to. Scorched earth cruelty for sure but it all feels natural and earned while he’s alone getting tormented by a ghost now.
Really enjoyed this section. Incredible presentation.
This face has real Willem Dafoe energy to me.
At least the sky is still beautiful.
2 Likes
Impressive speed!
2 Likes
Thank you! I’m making solid progress, I think I’ll just save for final thoughts when I get there. I dunno why the game doesn’t want to text hook as nicely for me as it does you two, but for the last couple reading sessions I got tired enough of the process that I’m just reading without it, so I think that’s another nice marker or progress that I can do find without it, heh. It’s not too bothersome; lookups aren’t THAT frequent and I’ve done this so much by now I’m comfortable doing them quickly on my phone.
3 Likes
The End
Ugh, the マリーア epilogue really got to me. ヤコポ really destroyed every single thing in his life and even when he tried to be good, or less bad, it ends like that. The visions before death are pretty obvious ways to go but the presentation and writing are just top notch, it hurts.
I thought ヤコポ’s development worked really well in the end and he’s not as greedy and power hungry as the original VN led me to believe. I mean he had a complex about being from the “inferior class” but he really was trying, in an increasingly distorted way, to make things better, and spent pretty much his entire time as 領主 lamenting and regretting how everything he did turned out. In the end at his heart he’s not バルニエ really; he makes tons of wrong choices but doesn’t actually want suffering to result from them. But I did quite enjoy the way the VN set up all the parallels for him to, in actions, turn into the former 領主.
Poor Morgana, her biggest wish in the end to just have come from a normal little town.
I made it! In the non-spoilers I’ll just say I thought this story was very good. I like the couple new tangents it found to explore and new characters added, though on the whole it’s definitely just adding detail to what we already knew, as I expected. Works as a very deep dive into a couple characters though, I think. Same super high quality as the main VN if you ask me.
I didn’t read them (yet?) but there are various extras. I guess there’s also Reincarnation, which popular opinion is a bit more mixed on (and it’s in a different, very anime style, though it has voice acting which is neat). It’s allegedly about 8 hours long and I think it mostly serves to finally give the people in this story something nice, heh. Might be worth a read someday?
I’m not too displeased with spending 13 days; I aimed for around 2 hours of reading most days so I still went slow compared to the time it’s meant to take but it is what it is. Was quite nice in the last few days to just cast off my texthooking and do it manually; I have a lot of practice at that now.
3 Likes
Congrats!!
I find that not very motivating for some reason.
Repeating myself but I think that was very fast!
Now that’s the best part 
must feel great! The lookup times will soon be behind you!
1 Like
Yeah it adds a few new characters but it’s definitely heading to the same place we know about. Much more of a character study than novelty in any sort of surprises. I think it’s still good, and mostly gets better as it goes! But I feel you.
Thank you! Working on that. Just realized this is my 48th game/VN completed. And it’ll take a little time but I have 49 and 50 lined up with Shuten Order and The Silver Case far along… big milestone coming soon.
Edit: I’ll have to talk about this in my study log sometime, but I realized it was exactly one year ago I mentioned having 25 done, so lol. I guess I HAVE sped up. And, you know, one is The Hundred Line. Some of that is me focusing more on this one specific medium than I used to, but it’s definitely not the only reason.
Yeah! The desire to play way more normal videogames and things that couldn’t be hooked helped so much to force me out of my comfort zone to learn to do that better. I need to remember it wasn’t THAT long ago that reading a physical book was still intimidating/inconvenient to me. I do still lean towards easier ones physically, but it’s much more of a thing I do without worry, now.
3 Likes
Haha waw, that’s big! And it doesn’t even feel fair to count The Hundred Lines as only 1 VN, maybe it should count for 100 VNs xD
Or you need to look at the total char, but I guess you don’t always have it, with textractor not always working and so on (and sometimes I’ve had a different number than the one provided by JPDB too).
Very cool 
3 Likes
Congrats! Your positive thoughts sure motivate me to read more too, I should get to it.
I was thinking I might read some of those after as well, we’ll see. Though as you say, really would be nice to give the characters a break from all the suffering.
3 Likes
This is a save file I suppose? Weird that it’s blank. Your interface doesn’t match mine because of the mod and whatnot but generally delete does what it says, gets rid of the save. Lock is used to prevent yourself from accidentally deleting one, adding a step where you have to unlock to able to do that, for protecting saves you made at important points or something.
2 Likes
I took a screenshot of an empty save file to not show any spoiler. I was trying to point at “Delate”, which probably was meant to be “Delete”
3 Likes
Ohhh yeah my eyes just did that thing where you automatically read a word how it’s supposed to be and don’t even register the problem 
3 Likes