Does 428 have a fan translation?
How is this game compared to Katawa Shoujo?
It oddly doesn't, even though the Wii version came out in 2008. I was hoping someone would've released a translation patch for either the Wii or PSP versions, but I guess not...
It's hard to compare this game to Katawa Shoujo when both Sweet Fuse and KS have their own share of issues. For example, this is what I wrote about Katawa Shoujo last year:
x. Katawa Shoujo ; Katawa Shoujo seemed like it wasn’t going to be my thing when I started it. Actually, playing this game as a female is a little interesting. While I played other VNs where you play as a guy and you have a choice of several different routes with other girls, Katawa Shoujo is, I suppose, a decent first visual novel for people to play because some of the routes are rather well-written (but this leads to the fact that some of the routes aren’t, which leads to writing inconsistencies and sloppiness). I realize that I’m treading on eggshells when I say that Hisao is a very inconsistent character (his personality changes depending in which route you pick), and that leads him to lack a defined personality, which just feels a little weird because I don’t know a thing about him outside of being easily influenced. Players can turn the eroge scenes off if they wanted to. While sometimes the CGs feature odd proportions, some of them, like some of the watercolour ones, are quite pretty. The soundtrack is relatively decent and I like some of the samples they used.
Sweet Fuse, by contrast, doesn't have a similar issue with respect to the main character's personality. It has its own assorted issues in terms of pacing, dialogue where I'm banging my head on the table for people to get to the point, dialogue where I'm wondering if characters even pay attention to each other, and among other things. Additionally, it is a bit jarring when the Japanese VO isn't saying what the English text is saying. In some cases, like Hakuoki, it worked (with the grandest exception of Hijikata), but when it got to the point where my stream audience, who doesn't speak a lick of Japanese in the slightest, caught onto it, it's a little odd. English VO doesn't seem to be a financial option, so I can forgive that, but I thought it was funny when monolinguals picked up on the inconsistency.
KS's dialogue is pretty much straight to the point, and you're making decisions fairly quickly into the game. It's a game that doesn't waste the player's time with a ton of needless exposition at times, even if the writing overall is inconsistent.
...I hate to rain on the parade, but I'm not really enjoying SF so far. I will not say why until I complete a few routes (or perhaps I won't even say why in general in this thread, because I... don't really like going against the norm in overwhelmingly positive threads). I mean, if someone wants me to write up impressions if I finish all the routes, I will (because that's how I roll; I don't like writing impressions until after I finish a game/all routes in a VN). It's just that playing this game is making me question whether or not I've outgrown the otome genre despite having played Hakuouki: Reimeiroku Nagorigusa and Hakuouki: Junsouroku a few months ago and liked those.
I will say that my stream chat was being hilarious when Inafune appeared onstream because they begged for Mega Man games.
