Can someone give me some info on English patches?

In my endless quest for new visual novels to play (actually, I'm still pretty new to the medium) I've received quite a few recommendations from English-speaking sources; the problem is, I've been unsuccessful in finding patches for several of them. To be specific, I haven't been able to find an English patch for MuvLuv, SNOW, Symphonic Rain, or Memories Off, all of which I heard about from various forums. Do these games have English patches, or (by any chance, which I doubt) were any of them released in English? Or are people just reading Japanese/skipping dialogue or something like that?

[zalas]

No patches exist as far as I know for those games you listed, unless the hellfire bunny was doing something in secret...

[Agilis]

Hellfire bunny? Who's that! Someone's competing for my hellfire title!?

Anyways, I might be somewhat obsessed Muvluv. But I'm not about to translate it... It'd take me 2+ years of work time (over god knows how many years of my life), the tools don't exist, and by the time I finish, no one would care >_>

I do have a synopsis project going for the Muvluv series... on hold until I finish Narci2, but, I'll eventually get back to it...

~Hellfire Kitty

To Eternal: Don't worry... there's a lot of untranslated games which I'd like to play/read, too. And this fandom is quite small.

One anime blogger has written extensively about Muvluv games, but I don't know if he's ever considered working on translations.

[Asceai]

Full commercial games with English fan translation patches are basically Wind, Planetarian, Castle Fantasia 2, Kingdom, Tsukihime and ONE (and maybe some others I've forgotten/haven't heard of). It's not a very long list either way. :(

There are a bunch of projects pretty close to completion, but I don't know of any translation _projects_ for any of the titles the original poster listed (of which I think MuvLuv and Symphonic Rain are the most worthy of a translation project). However, since fan translation patches require a pretty ridiculous investment of effort with virtually zero return, they are few and far between.

EDIT: Okay, it seems MuvLuv and Symphonic Rain both have translation projects @ tlwiki, but considering neither have any actual text translated calling them active might not be precisely correct.

[DaFool]

Hmmm yeah just go with whatever is available right now. Heck, you might even have a backlog of titles to play! (My backlog is 2 titles right now). Since visual novels take forever to play (especially if you are busy working), I imagine their backlogs just keep piling up.

I restrict myself to english games... I wonder what the backlog is for people who play in raw Japanese... I dare not imagine I can fathom it.

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by DaFool

I restrict myself to english games... I wonder what the backlog is for people who play in raw Japanese... I dare not imagine I can fathom it.

Well, it's the fact that there are very few quality translated visual novels and original english language visual novels available.. so when I got into these games a while ago, I started relearning Japanese so that I could start playing the games that everyone was talking about.

I have a number of games I want to play, but presently funds do not permit. So I've been filling my hard-drives and saturating my net connection with commercial web trial editions and freeware doujin games (roughly 1/10 of them are actually enjoyable, and 1/10 of those are of a length approaching commercial games, so you do go through quite a bit).

However, if your Japanese is as bad as mine is, and you need to replay the game a few times to 'get it', they end up lasting quite a bit longer.

As for the original English language visual novels scene, well, I've played a few of the free ones available (mostly Ren'Py games et. al), but I'm very hesitant about spending money on the couple of commercial ones available. The ones I've seen haven't really been at the level of polish where I'm willing to spend money that could be going towards ANGEL TYPE. I don't know if I'm going to like the upcoming Shira Oka or not, but I may just buy it for the sake of supporting the original english language visual novels scene. The plot sounds almost Gakuen Redux'ey (one of the aforementioned Ren'Py novels - a single-path one - that I quite liked).

here's a link
http://shii.org/translate/

The ones I've seen haven't really been at the level of polish where I'm willing to spend money that could be going towards ANGEL TYPE.

If you refer to my earliest venture into the market, I don't blame you, I wouldn't have bought it either. :)

On the other hand, sales encourage development and the creation of games with more polish later on. That first game, despite its weakness, sold enough copies to make it appear worthwhile to try again and spend a little budget this time. And so there is now Fatal Hearts, which involved a bunch of artists and a MUCH more involved storyline and longer game.

I hate to make the argument of 'Buy crap, so that there will be more and potentially-better crap!' but it's true - if something is shown to sell there will be more of it,and if something flops it will be held up as an example to discourage other people from trying.

[Asceai]

Well, I admit, one of the attractions is that a lot of this stuff doesn't require me to pay ~$100 inc. shipping to find out if it's crap or not. Maybe once I've got some more funds (I should be making a bit extra next year) I'll look into the scene again.

Originally Posted by Asceai

Full commercial games with English fan translation patches are basically Wind, Planetarian, Castle Fantasia 2, Kingdom, Tsukihime and ONE (and maybe some others I've forgotten/haven't heard of). It's not a very long list either way. :(.

Except for Planetarian, it's impossible to find any of these on
Himeya, Ebay or Palet store.... ? :(

I don't know about online, but Wind is pretty easy to find in shops at akiba, so It shouldn't be hard to find it online. If no regular online shop sells it, just use <a href="http://www.akibado.com/">Akibado.</a> It will take a bit more time and money than another online store, but Akibado I've found is really good about going and finding what you want, even If It's hard to find. They could probably also find you ONE, cuz I've seen a couple copies at the local Sofmap. Castle and Kingdom were ROM games IIRC, so they're really really old. And Tsukihime... well, Tsukihime isn't too hard to find, as long as you don't mind paying about 30,000円 (~$300) for the Tsukibako set.

If I were interested in Visual Novels, I'd say go for Fate/Stay Night and Utawarerumono for now. They're both easy to find, Fate is partially patched, and underway, While Utaware is near completion. After that maybe try to snag Clannad.

Originally Posted by kouryuu

I don't know about online, but Wind is pretty easy to find in shops at akiba, so It shouldn't be hard to find it online. If no regular online shop sells it, just use <a href="http://www.akibado.com/">Akibado.</a> It will take a bit more time and money than another online store, but Akibado I've found is really good about going and finding what you want, even If It's hard to find. They could probably also find you ONE, cuz I've seen a couple copies at the local Sofmap. Castle and Kingdom were ROM games IIRC, so they're really really old. And Tsukihime... well, Tsukihime isn't too hard to find, as long as you don't mind paying about 30,000円 (~$300) for the Tsukibako set.

I've had horrible experiences with akibado. They had bad customer service and wouldn't answer to any of of emails in a one month period. Really really really really slow too, although i heard of people who used akibado and it turned out fine. I used shoppingmalljapan before, not as worse as akibado but still bad. Customer service was borderline ok but the fees and website put me in despair. Now... Crescent Shop i was satisfied with. They kept the fees low, website was easy to use, real time bidding, and there was only one shipping cost (shoppingmalljapan made me pay for shipping from japan to usa, and then another one from their warehouse in usa to my residence). However it's difficult ordering any 18+ products since you have to provide proof of age and they don't accept paypal for those type of items (gotta pay by international bank wire or sumthing like that), it seems they stick with the rules very scrictly. Lastly we have rinkya, yeah.... probably the most professional but by the time I recieved my item i would have payed double of what it was actually was. Their fee rates could make anyone cry.

I used 4 services and none of them(except maybe crescent shop) made me happy. Does anyone know of another service that is actually good? XD just realized that i'm complaining too much. Just i get a little mad D:< when i remember how i lost money using these services. Hope this was a bit helpful.