So ever since I finished Saya no Uta, I’ve had the incredible urge to play this game; Cartagra. However, the english translation for it is either going terribly slow, or is just overall dead. I’d go with the second one.

Anyway, even though learning Japanese would be cool (and still faster than waiting for an English patch most likely), I don’t have the patience for that. So I turned to AGTH + Atlas for machine translation and the results were……actually alright.

I’m honestly surprised. The translations this thing spits back are horribly crude English, but despite that, it’s generally easy enough to follow along and know whats going on. Given facial expressions and character speaking combined with my extremely small, basic knowledge of Japanese does help quite a bit, it’s generally understandable nonetheless. The one thing that I wonder if I can correct is the fact that Atlas translates character names as their literal kanji meanings. So the main character, [5 in Autumn], escorts [Harmony Leaves]
to another town, the goes home and meets [the first sound]. Those are some amazing names. (The actual names are Shugo, Kazuna and Hatsune respectively).

Now given, there are some gems this translator comes out with. One scene your sister lifts up her skirt and smirks at you, and the translator spits out:

“The body has stiffened to the remainder”

That was an amazing translation.

First H-scene/flashback thing. Creepy.

As far as the game itself goes though, so far I’m really liking it. I don’t know too much storyline-wise yet, as I only played for about 2 hours. Which, with the translation times having a slight delay, probably only equals 1.5 hours into the game. However, I’m LOVING the artwork and music, it’s all fantastic. Everything is bleak, cold and miserable, and provides a good environment for a murder mystery. And judging from some of the pictures I’ve seen (Spoilers? :X), there will be quite the gratuitous amount of bloodshed to come.

So far my favorite female character is the first sound Hatsune. She’s cute and caring, and just seems generally lovable. This could be because she’s the character that’s just generally been around the most as well, but I’ll probably like her most anyway. There was one other character who appeared in a flashback thing of sorts who sort of reminded me of Kiri from SZS or her lookalike from Hyakko. I love that character design, and that’s no exception here, but she had about 1 line, and is apparently a minor character. Oh well.

Anyway, this game looks really promising, though it’s gonna suck going through it without a guide or anything. Atlas flips out whenever I get to a choice scene as well. Oh well, lots of saving, trial and error. Considering I’m in this for a good bloody Visual Novel, bad ends could be just as satisfying as the good ones…