Although I’m a big fan of Island and Evenicle, this year has been nowhere near as kind to translated visual novels as the previous one with the top of this year not even coming close to the top five of the 2017’s list.

A lot of moege can be seen on the list this year, indicating where the market is heading to lately. I haven’t checked most of them as they didn’t fall within my area of interest, but if you’ve been following my reviews, you may remember I didn’t have the highest opinion of Sabbat of the Witch or Hapymaher (some people say it’s not a moege, but it shares all the worst parts with one as far as I’m concerned).

At least Sorcery Jokers made it to the list to represent the only chuuni release that I know this year. I wonder if we’ll see any next year.

I probably should check Maitetsu out since I’ve heard it’s actually a pretty entertaining read behind the excruciatingly cutesy exterior. And I’ll probably be checking Fureraba sooner or later too, as SMEE’s Pure x Connect was one of the few moege I actually enjoyed.

All in all, it was a pretty underwhelming year. I wish we could have released Damekoi this year as it was a good chance for it to contend for the top spot. Hopefully, it won’t be too long before it’s released now. And I hope 2019 will be a more exciting year in general.

EDIT: Oh snap, I had to update the video because I missed a few things. First, one of my favorite visual novels Baldr Force was actually randomly translated and no one was talking about it. I’m flabbergasted it’s not on top of the list, but maybe it does look a bit outdated by today’s standards and not many people have gotten past the first two boring routes yet. I personally enjoyed it more than Baldr Sky, so now I’m starting to wonder how that game is going to do.

Tsujidou-san was also something I had in my to-read list for a while as it seems one of the few visual novels not written by Takahiro to successfully capture the charm of Tsuyokiss and Majikoi.

I also added a few special mentions I forgot. Namely, Chuusotsu, which I definitely expected to see higher on the list. I wonder if that’s because it’s only the first game in the series or that the west isn’t really into the old-fashioned philosophical visual novels in the vein of Cross†Channel and Subahibi.

And speaking of the first in the series, I Walk Among Zombies was also released this year to much lower ratings than I expected (it was pretty high up on egs and in my to-read list). I originally delayed reading it because I was waiting for the rest of the volumes be released, but it’s definitely one of the VNs I’m really looking forward to.

Finally, If My Heart Had Wings has been finally retranslated, so people can finally read the actual game and not the garbled mess shat out by moenovel. I thought it was pretty boring when I read it in Japanese, but it still deserved to be coherently translated at least.

It turns out this year wasn’t as bad as I thought with low-key fan translations surprisingly getting us some of the more interesting titles.