Otome Gaming Guide for beginners

I've noticed that many new otome gamers here are being discouraged by the fact that many of the older gamers have some amount of Japanese knowledge and thinking they might not have much opportunities to play without any background on Japanese. However that is not true, many of us didn't have much idea when we  started playing otome games. There are a number of Japanese games translated to English as well, so new players can start with them first, then later move on to games with easy grammar which can be translated halfway using certain software.

For all my posing, I’m not even close to fluent XD All the Japanese I know are tidbits I picked up from watching anime and playing visual novels. I can read Hiragana, but I am still struggling with Katakana and let’s not even talk about Kanjis XDDD So if I can play Japanese otome games, you can too!

Note: If you want to play PS2,PSP and NDS games on PC, see the 2nd to last topic, "emulation".

• English freeware downloads
  

There are a good number of English otome games with romance themes, specially at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], but not all are free, and many are made by only a small group of people and you cannot always expect the same quality as commercial games. I only mention here the ones which
                a) are FREE
                 b) I feel are pretty good
                 c) I have played myself

Long list with download links inside the Spoiler.

Spoiler:

• List of Commercial games available in English
  

OELVN (original English language visual novel)
Always Remember Me
Love & Order
X-Note
Heileen 1,2,3
Cafe 0~The Drowned Mermaid
Date Warp
Fatal hearts
Magical Diary Horse Hall
The Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbrook
dUpLicity - Beyond the Lies
Host Holic  
1931: Scheherazade at the Library of Pergamum
Cinders
The Royal Trap
Area-x
Blue Rose
Miranda's Choice (the prologue is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.])
Nicole

Japanese/Korean Games translated to English
Alice in the Heart (Android/iphone version translated, PC/PSP version untranslated)
Starry ☆ Sky ~in Spring~
The Second Reproduction
Hatoful Boyfriend
Tokimeki Memorial: Girl's Side 1,2 (DS only)
Hakuouki ~Shinsengumi Kitan~ (Named Hakuoki ~Demon of the Fleeting Blossom~ for PSP,  Hakuoki: Memories of the Shinsengumi for 3DS)
Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo!! (DS version translated, PC version untranslated)
Yo-Jin-Bo ~Unmei no Freude~
Dandelion ~Wishes brought to you~
Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (PSP only)
Princess Nightmare

You guys should also follow [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], it's updated regularly with latest news on English translated otome games. I also didn't count the voltage/solmare games (with the ticket stuff and the like) above, she lists everything.


How to play NON-ENGLISH visual novels (without English patches):

I mainly play the VNs that either have been translated by company themselves or have an English patch, but since most of the BEST otome games tend to be in japanese and are rarely translated, so I had to learn the tricks to use translator programs to translate in game text. Mainly you need these programs- ATLAS, AGTH or ITH, and Translator Aggragator.

• AGTH is Anime Games Text Hooker, and ITH is Interactive Text Hooker. Both AGTH and ITH extract the text from the game as you play, but I mainly use ITH now a days as it is newer and works better with new games.
  
• ATLAS is an OFFLINE translator which instantly translates the text extracted by AGTH/ITH
  
• Translator Aggragator is an awesome program that runs Atlas alongside a couple of online translator interfaces, so you can get multiple translations in case of confusing lines (that happens a lot).
  
• Local Emulator is cool program that removes the need to Change your regional settings to Japanese.
  

Often games have special region-crack patches and such, before playing you should check [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at Mistress Alita’s for detailed explanations. The information is a bit old -she mainly used AGTH and h-codes which ITH doesn't need most of the time. You can look up  [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] in her site if you want in depth explanations. It's a GREAT guide, and you should read it if you're new to all this, but I think you should take a look at the instructions below FIRST to have an idea of what you have to do before getting flooded with info, OK?

So what you have to do is:

-Change your regional settings to Japanese as per the instructions in Sasugasugoi's "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]" if you use XP/Windows7, see Misstress Alita's guide if you use Mac. The reason you have to do this is because your computer has to be able to recognize the Japanese text used in the games and needs to have the proper fonts.
OR, download [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], unzip the file and install from LEInstaller.exe. Now open your Japanese game by right clicking the exe, selecting Local Emulator-->Run with Application profile. A pop up will appear and you'll have to set up the application profile the first time only, after that you'll get a "Local Emulator-->Run in Japanese (Admin)" option that you should use. 

You should be able to play Japanese games by doing either of the above options. Small warning: some game files are strangely encoded and their filenames become unreadable if you unzip them without changing your regional settings, and sometimes that prevents the game from running. So using local emulator would mean you might have problem running that small percentage of games. Setting the locale to Japanese is fool proof,but some people don't like to do that and they can use Local Emulator instead.

-Start the game Download this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] (229 MB, contains ATLAS, AGTH, ITH, edict2, Mecab, TAHelper,TAplugin) and[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
-
-Use ITH to extract the text from the game, there's no installation needed, just copy it wherever you want. Look up Sasugasugoi's "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]" for details for use
-Install ATLAS according to "[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]", we only need to install it once and forget about it, since Translation Aggregator doesn't need ATLAS open to use it.
-Then open Translation Aggregator (just copy it wherever you want, no install required) by running Translation Aggregator.exe which will have a couple of windows. Close all other than the following:  "ATLAS", "Google","Honyaku","Babel Fish", "Excite" and "Original Text". Actually you need only "ATLAS" and "Original Text", the rest are online translators to help you with the confusing lines. If you don't have internet when playing these 2 are enough. Enable automatic translation for each window by clicking on the icon that looks like a clipboard, right next to the name of the window.

From now on ITH will automatically capture the text of your Japanese game as the lines of the game progress with your clicks/on auto mode and the ATLAS window of Translation Aggregator will translate it immediately even if you're offline. Any online translator windows you have open will do the same, but you'll need to be connected to the net.

More things to know
H-codes: There can be some problems with the text captured by ITH: it can have repeated words, weird nonsense, or not contain all the text-which means you'll have to use a H-code (just a word, nothing big) that will tell the program how to get the correct. For AGTH you have to use H-codes for many games, but for ITH it's pretty rare since ITH can handle these problems itself. I'll explain the process of adding h-codes later since most of the time you won't need any. You can't make h-codes, you'll have to find the ones people with programming knowledge have already found out. Visit here to check if your otome game needs any from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], or [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] at Mistress Alita’s for detailed explanations (the database has more game codes and is updated regularly, but they aren’t detailed).

NoCD/NoDVD/AlphaROM patches: A lot of games need patches to run because the games are region locked meaning people outside japan can't play them without patches (I have no clue why the makers hate the idea of foreigners buying their games). The details on whether a game needs such patch is mentioned at the Mistress Alita link above, but if even her advice doesn’t work try using a different version of the patch available [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Now you can go and read the Complete idiot guide, it can't scare you any longer

Optional for Japanese learners
Read under spoiler if you have had some exposure to Japanese at least

Spoiler:

• Guide Sites for Japanese Games:
  

I need to warn any fellow Otome game lover about this: ALWAYS HAVE A GUIDE AT HAND! 90% of otome games (a lot of VNs in general) have such impossible-to-guess choices that you can never predict! I mainly use the following sites for my walkthroughs and keep 2 tabs open when I play-one showing the original guide, and the other a google-translated version of it.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

However sometimes looking around for other guides is wise.  Often google can be your friend, try finding out the japanese name of your game from [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.](Visual Novel Database) and google it with “攻略”.

• Where to buy otome games:
  

Japanese games: The WONDERFUL cadavaberry of tumblr has provided very [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] of this post on buying Japanese games, check it out.

EDIT: Otome Jikan has an even better and detailed article on this [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

English games: Among the companies that make English otome games for PC, the ones I like most are:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

• Emulation:
  

I use the below emulators for games on Non-PC platforms:

Playstation Portable (PSP): [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and JPCSP are the main 2 PSP emulators. PPSSPP works much faster than JPCSP and is much easier to install and handle, and now even supports integration with visual novel reader which means emulated games can be hooked like PC games. So I recommend PPSSPP. Sakimichi has a tutorial on installing it [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].
If you want to hook text from PSP games I have [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], but before reading that you should check out [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] on it. Warning: VNR is quite resource hungry, and can be rather uncooperative if your computer is old. (Mine is almost 8 years old so it gives me trouble sometimes )

Playstation 2 (PS2):
PCSX2 is the only PS2 emulator that currently does everything you want and gives playable results on a reasonable number (but not all) of games. Get it here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Nintendo DS (NDS): Hmm, I am torn between [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], as DeSmuMe is much more advanced and user-friendly than NO$GBA, which is faster but has less options. I suggest desmume if your PC/laptop is good enough.

And that is all for now, I'm open to suggestions to how to improve this guide

What an awesomely helpful post! Hey admins, could we get a sticky on this?

One more link I'll throw in: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] is a pretty good guide to getting that emulator to work. In the newer 3000+ builds of JCPSP there's a much easier way to get voices playing!

OMG...it was your blog....that I went through for setting up JPCSP...LOL... now I got a chance to say thank you.....

Wow... :shock:... this is so awesome and helpful, Thank you!

Nice compilation, Voca! If I think of anything to add, I'll poke ya about it!

And she's right that most of us started with little knowledge. I started playing La Corda d'Oro with almost no knowledge of Japanese, studying as I went along. I couldn't hook up AGTH, ATLAS, or any of the other text hooks, so I did the best I could- I'm going to have to go through again and read it now that I know what's being said XD

NuitNoire wrote:Nice compilation, Voca! If I think of anything to add, I'll poke ya about it!

And she's right that most of us started with little knowledge. I started playing La Corda d'Oro with almost no knowledge of Japanese, studying as I went along. I couldn't hook up AGTH, ATLAS, or any of the other text hooks, so I did the best I could- I'm going to have to go through again and read it now that I know what's being said XD

I agree with NuitNoire. This is an amazing source of info you've gathered Voca. It must have taken a while to set it all up. Sheer beauty <3

I also started out with no knowledge of Japanese when I began playing otome games. It didn't (and still doesn't) feel like hard work though. The whole time I play, I am engaged in learning because the games makes it fun. It shouldn't feel like a burden. Although if you start feelings tired, and like you are starting to miss things you normally would understand, that is a good time to take a breather.

With all of Voca's tutorials and advice in this post, I guarantee anyone can learn to enjoy the Japanese games too. Give it a shot~

It seems really helpful, but 'how to play non-English visual novels' part seems really complicated to me >.< I hope I can completely figure it out when I fully read the guide Thanks for everything

EclairHime wrote:It seems really helpful, but 'how to play non-English visual novels' part seems really complicated to me >.< I hope I can completely figure it out when I fully read the guide Thanks for everything

Well it is a bit of pain for new people to set up all those softwares, I remember how much googling and forum stalking I had to do when I started. It's only natural to feel so, don't be discouraged! I tried to explain everything in steps without using any complicated jargon (I also advised to read that Idiot's guide after you read what I wrote because it would have been even more overwhelming), but still if you have something you don't get you can always ask me here or in a PM

Hey I just noticed this here, and like, WOW. This post is amazing especially for beginners, and English-only speakers. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

ugh, PSP emulation is a huge pain. I tried getting one to work after my bother busted my PSP... I just kinda failed. Good luck to anyone who tries. C:

Nice compilation! This is indeed helpful. :Db

Mecab is giving me a hard time to make it work. I loved using both JParser and Mecab. Though I'm usually okay with just JParser, Mecab gets the correct furigana for names. >_<

For guides, Momokan is good too.

oh.. thank you ><

Totally late on the uptake, but great guide, vocaotome! Not to sound like an ass, but I'm sure it will prevent a flood of pointless topics on how to otome-game.

Hey, I found a website that is offering a way to translate visual novels without the extra difficulty of the patching process. I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks awesome!

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

That does sound like a pretty neat programme. If it allows me to access the text, (as in, I can copy and paste it, etc.) then I have no reason to not use it and help translate more games. My translation methods include cross-referencing with my dictionaries to make sure it's accurate, so it'd be much harder if I can't highlight the text I want to double check.

I just skimmed through the article, so I'm sure I missed some important details.

Thank you so much for writing all of this down     Well I actually kinda have most of the stuffs you wrote down but I am still totally amazed by the dedication you put in that! Showed this to my friend and her eyes went pop with delight haha! Cheers to you!

Oooohh! Thank you! This is super helpful!

Although a PSP Emulator barely works for my computer cause it's a old dinosaur, so I just use my mom's computer from time to time.

But thanks for this!

ATLAS is going haywire on my Windows 8 :S Any advice?

Can anyone give me link to free reverse harem themed game? english -translated.. coz i  searched and searched but all i can find are Japanese ones.. :(i tried to use translators like you mentioned but no use.. 
Good Day

hello!
well, most of the English-translated otome games are not free, unfortunately.. but you can look it up on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and search for the free one~ (example: Pyrite Heart) the site always updates about otome games in many platforms, such as PSP, iOS, android, computer, and the good news is everything is translated/written in English so you don't have to worry about it being in Japanese~
it's a bit hassle to browse one by one because there isn't any tags, but I hope it helps!  

It looks way more updated than my list here on OH! Sadly, I'm not as invested in English otome games as much as most fans seeing as I can understand Japanese! I sincerely hope for the day that more games get localised.

reyscha wrote:hello!
well, most of the English-translated otome games are not free, unfortunately.. but you can look it up on [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and search for the free one~ (example: Pyrite Heart) the site always updates about otome games in many platforms, such as PSP, iOS, android, computer, and the good news is everything is translated/written in English so you don't have to worry about it being in Japanese~
it's a bit hassle to browse one by one because there isn't any tags, but I hope it helps!  

Thank you for your help.. i actually can't change my regional setting because it gives error when i restart my PC   i have tried many things but none helps even the English-translated ones doesn't run without regional settings  , so i gave up    .. now what i learned is that download the ones which are originally in English.. and now i might be able to play my First Game..    

Laramie Castiel wrote:It looks way more updated than my list here on OH! Sadly, I'm not as invested in English otome games as much as most fans seeing as I can understand Japanese! I sincerely hope for the day that more games get localised.

yes, the site is updating constantly so it's a good place if you're looking for multi-specs otome news~   
aah, I'm jealous of you-- I do hope lots of VNs will be given a chance at getting localized too!   

Aqsa wrote:Thank you for your help.. i actually can't change my regional setting because it gives error when i restart my PC   i have tried many things but none helps even the English-translated ones doesn't run without regional settings  , so i gave up    .. now what i learned is that download the ones which are originally in English.. and now i might be able to play my First Game..    

eh? error after restart?    what OS are you on? have you also tried to google the error code or change the region while on admin user?

I think Ren'Py VNs are independent on region settings, so you can at least play Ren'Py VNs :3

Don't give up just yet!

Aqsa wrote:Thank you for your help.. i actually can't change my regional setting because it gives error when i restart my PC   i have tried many things but none helps even the English-translated ones doesn't run without regional settings  , so i gave up    .. now what i learned is that download the ones which are originally in English.. and now i might be able to play my First Game..    

eh? error after restart?    what OS are you on? have you also tried to google the error code or change the region while on admin user?

I think Ren'Py VNs are independent on region settings, so you can at least play Ren'Py VNs :3

Don't give up just yet!

I am using Windows 7.
Yup i tried but there wasn't a error code (As there usually is) so i wasn't able to describe the error. it just said that due to recent change in software or hardware, windows can't start (or something like that   ) and i started windows in safe mode. i was doing the changes as administrator..
Ren'Py VNs?? it would be really nice of you if you could provide me a link.. please    .
Nope i haven't given up yet, i played my first game called Idol Crush. it was really basic and i guess path was 5-10 min (still new to this), and well i didn't really enjoy the whole still-image and reading dialogues, anime are way better  
Thank you for your help.
Good day  

So I tried to google it but I didn't really find any direct solution, but I found a poster asking if you have installed language interface pack or language pack on your computer. Do you? I remember some of the old version windows doesn't support Japanese language and you have to install it separately. Windows can't start.. did you get a blue screen? Some posters said they got a blue screen.  



You can find and search for Ren'Py coded VNs at here~ (I hope it's okay to post a link) [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
You can find lots of VN genres, and there's all sorts of art style, game lengths (some of the game even have more than 10 hours playtime!), plots, and so on. Go on and explore it! I'd bet you can easily get a new favorite game~  (and most of the game is free too! Sometimes there's a commercial for VNs, you have to buy to play it, but the game doesn't disappoint!)
By the way, Idol Crush is a Ren'Py coded VN too! XD

You're welcome, I hope you get even more hooked on VN, hehe
Have a nice day too