Whenever I talk about these games I always feel like an Otaku, you know, the kind of people who stay in front of a screen all day watching anime/playing games. (only I don't cosplay, simply because I don't bother to waste my effort to further uglify myself with bad costumes).

But in any case, I'm starting to wonder why text based AVG games can have such a big market in Japan but not here in America. Maybe it's because of the culture differences, that people in the US are busy enough in real life and don't really bother to live another life in the world of games unless they are killing RAWWR ZOMBIES or ALIENS or something that makes the screen go all bloody and gooy with all the flash swords and magics and 3-D graphics. Not that I'm biased against western game players, but I'm really getting the feeling that most text based AVG games, even if they have managed to come to the US or Europe, are not as popular as other games of other genre that were imported (like KH, FF, just to name a few). The only game on top of my head that's popular is probably the Ace Attorney series, and now that I think about it, I feel somewhat proud for it, being a text-based AVG game and doing so well in America.

But others are not as fortunate, I should say. A few weeks ago I managed to get my hands on Lux Pain, which is a relatively old game (released about a year ago in Japan) that had just been released in America/Europe(I think). It's a text-based AVG game, with a really complicated plot, AVG level graphics (as in, really pretty, or else I wouldn't get my hands on it ), and a scratching-and-tapping system that makes the game more interactive than most of the AVG games. Upon first impression I thought the game was quite impressive, and really, being imported to the US means the game must have been approved by the majority, right? But when it comes to critiques from the professionals the game was shot down, hard, with a poor rating. Why? Because they thought the game is overly complicated (plot wise) and boring (control wise).

Now complicated I cannot complain, considering the game is a mystery solving game and probably a little hard to new players because it doesn't give any kind of tutorial on what you should be doing (on the other hand, it also means the control's easy enough to handle without a tutorial). But...boring? If inventing an interactive system besides from reading the text and pressing the next button is boring to US players, then I can understand why AVG games don't have a big market here. After all, these adventure type people would die of boredom just clicking a single botton all the time for most AVG games! (and for games as long as Lamento, it might as well be sheer torture. )

Oh, one other thing about Lux Pain: they said the translation of the game was horrible and hard to understand. But that's hardly the game's fault is it? Speaking of the careless attitude of certain people toward AVG games...

Of course, the reason I'm bringing this up is because...well, all going back to Love Revo. -w- Some of you guys may say you want to play it because of my (constant and annoying) fanarts, but really, to the majority of game players in US, it's probably not as appealing. In a way it's a good thing that it doesn't come to America, because it would really really hurt to see Love Revo being shot down like Lux Pain (which, I repeat, is a great game. *currently trying to beat it...without a walkthrough, because the American people didn't bother to write walkthroughs for it and spent all their time bashing the game and talking about how bad it is. ).