Getting into RGD 101

The visual novels

AWESOME news! The great folks over at MangaGamer are localising and releasing RGD in English on Steam! I'll leave this tutorial up for posterity's sake (and also it's not out yet), but this will be a link to the Steam page when it's out!

The lovely people over at Witch Hunt have patched all four seasons of the RGD visual novels, and the patch is available on their website. The section on how to actually install it is slightly outdated on their site, so here's a tutorial.

  1. Buy a copy of RGD -The Best-* (which includes all four seasons) for aprox. $20 USD over here. You should recieve a download link in your email in a few minutes. Be sure to download this before 48hrs have passed, since it does expire.
  2. Download Witch Hunt's English patch over here.
  3. Run the RGD installer (it's all in Japanese, but click the first button on the left when the extraction is done) and extract Witch Hunt's patch to it's own folder.
  4. Inside the patch folder, copy the file that's named "[WH] RGD ENGLISH" and paste it inside your main "RoseGunsDays-the Best-" folder. To recap, that should be located in C:\Program Files\07th_Expansion\RoseGunsDays-the Best- using the default settings.
  5. To launch, go inside the RGD ENGLISH folder and execute the RoseGunsDays Final Season file. Enjoy!

    6. *Witch Hunt's patch was designed for RGD Last Season, instead of RGD -The Best-. However, the only option that is currently available to purchase legally is -The Best-, and it works just fine. -The Best- contains an extra scenario which Witch Hunt did not translate, but you can find it on YouTube courtesy of the amazing Lamdadelto. The main story is still 100% available.

    The mangas

    Despite what certain visual novel purists would tell you, the mangas are a perfectly good alternative if you don't want to go through that giant process above. Seasons one through three have been licensed in English by Yen Press, and season four has been... I'm guessing in licensing hell or something similar for a few years. We're probably never getting it officially. Season one has four volumes, season two has three, and season three has three. You can probably find the Yen Press releases in your favorite manga store, or directly from their official retailers. Links below lead to the Yen Press pages for them. I suggest buying secondhand, though, as they're extraordinarily cheap on pages like eBay.

    What about Last Season? Another big update! Over at MangaDex, a wonderful user by the name of cocoa93 translated it into English ! This will be replaced with the official release if it ever comes out, but it's important to support fan translations when no other alternatives are available. Otherwise, your only way to experience the full story is to read the visual novels or watch a playthrough.

    There's also two manga spinoffs/prequels, one of which has been released (sadly only as an ebook) in English and the other still in limbo. If you still feel like owning anything that's not been localised, they're always available in Japanese.

    The stage play...?

    If for whatever reason you want to start with the stage play, I wouldn't recommend it due to the general inaccesibility. It's an adaptation of all four seasons, each about an hour and a half long (give or take), and fully untranslated/uncaptioned (Please someone do this. Please. I don't have money but I'll be forever grateful). They are available online if you know where to look, but the rips aren't very high quality and I don't feel it right to link it here, especially considering the rerun showings were not too long ago. (I swear, I don't mean to sound gatekeep-y! I just don't want to get in trouble! And also uploading huge video files is scary!) You can also buy the official releases off DVD in Japanese markets, but they are... very expensive now. Still, though, they're good! If you're a massive fan and wish to see it for yourself, contact me and I can share what low-res releases I have.