Re: DLsite Maniax vs. Pro
Note that you don't need separate accounts between the two.
You DO need a separate account for ecchi-eng (RE...),
but all the others (maniax - RJ, pro - VJ, books - BJ) can use the same account,
and can even combine purchases across sites.
As I understand it, maniax is for "amateur" and small producers, where often dlsite is the only available outlet, with prices up to about 2000 yen.
pro is for large, established producers with products that are generally available via mail-order, real brick-and-mortar stores and various other download sites. Prices frequently reach 7000 yen.
I wish pro was more useful than it is - sadly, it's usually flooded with ADV games - professional art and voice acting, but usually zero gameplay other than maybe a few branching choices. When you do get gameplay it's usually not particularly engaging or innovative.
What makes this worse is that they tend to have "trailer" demo movies rather than actual playable demos, which often include no gameplay footage whatsoever, making it harder to figure out if it's a game or just a voiced CG gallery.
There are some exceptions, though: Most eushully games, the later touchable games, a few random ones here and there.
BEWARE: A few publishers in /pro/ are very scared of foreigners and add DRM that specifically prevents the game from working unless it's running on a native-japanese system. "zion" is infamous for this, as well as a few others. Sadly, there's usually no good indication of this - officially, ecchi-eng is the only supported platform for foreigners.
Maniax games are at least games, though with less polish, and substantially lower-quality visuals - I suppose your average one-man-developer has more interest in experimenting than some large "do what made profits last time" developer studio.
I should mention /books/ while we're on the topic: These are usually digital versions of physical comic books, or sometimes digital-only releases. They're surprisingly worth looking through - there's something for just about any preference, and the price-per-page completely blows the self-published /maniax/ comics out of the water: 1000 yen for 200 pages isn't uncommon. Of course, they're not going to be translated, but it's usually not that important just what the giant tentacle monster is saying while it's pounding the magical girl - you'll pick up the plot just fine.
That said, beware that DRM is fairly common - not the majority, but some works will require the dlsite viewer app to decrypt. Clearly indicated on the item's page, and not a big deal (there's even an android app) but could be an issue for some. Though most times, you can still view DRMed works through dlsite's web viewer without any special installation, too.
