Developer/publisher: Spike Chunsoft.
Platform: PS4,switch, PC.
Official Site: https://www.spike-chunsoft.com/ai/
Official Site: https://www.spike-chunsoft.com/ai/
VNDB: https://vndb.org/v26532
Release date: 17-9-2019
Honestly I wasn't sure what I was going to play next
so I picked another game I bought on a PSN sale.
I thought it might be a good pick for something different from the usual VN's
and because AI is all the rage these days. Didn't quite feel like playing Yakuza 7 yet.
Since its a mystery type of VN I decided I was going to not use a guide till I
really got stuck or something. Nothing appeared to be missable as you could go back
later for certain things but man this game got surprisingly dark despite having a lot of fluff.
Pro's
- Great cast of characters.
- Pretty good mystery, you won't find it out till almost the end.
- Decent graphics, the character models were pretty good.
Grey Area
- Route system was interesting but early on it can feel disconnected.
- Jokes are fine and dandy but it did hurt the scenario at times.
Con's
- Somnium's were annoying to progress through.
- Point and click segments for the sake of having them.
- There was no need to replay mini scens of certain major events.
As for the story its a mystery VN so I won't be writing about the story.
You're sort of thrown into it and as you play you will get to know
the protagonist and the people in his life while trying solve a murder
which leads to other things but it was definitely a whacky ride.
Sometimes the game likes to joke around like during some investigation or dream part
which ultimately killed any tension the game had at that point.
I guess they wanted to keep it light-hearted despite touching upon deeper subjects.
It is what it is.
Some of it made me smile/laugh and other times I was just oh...
By the time I finished the second day/chapter I was pretty much completely hooked
and wanted to see where it was going so this wasn't at all a bad mystery VN.
NGL the reason I kept playing was because I wanted Mizuki to get better
which lead to me wanting to find out about whatever the hell was going on.
There are point and click segments and you can examine objects in the room
which sometimes lead to fun dialogue, during blue and red route I tried to select everything
but eventually stopped because it added nothing. Only very few moment I thought
they used it right which is such a shame for a mystery oriented game.
 |
| Okay this was useful info, heheheh. |
There's apparently an achievement for finding everything in Boss's room at a specific
point and I am like wew lad... never doing that without a guide.💀💀💀
 |
| New mononoke chigiri lore just dropped! |
but thankfully most of that is optional and sometimes it gives an achievement.
Like Kaname tried to sniffle a shoebox at some point or staring at a stereo set
and being reminded of boobies. I did xray'd the mermaid during story
but not enough to trigger some random achievement.💀 Thankfully through
the flowchart you can easily replay any segment in the story so I got that postgame.
There were a few moments were you had to interrogate a character and most of them
were fairly easy except that politics guy, idk its the way the evidence
against him was presented? very easy to make a mistake
and you get an achievement if you do it correctly.
Probably just a me problem... but that one was the hardest for me.
For my first route I decided to stay blind but you basically have to do all of them
to really get what's going on. I ended up on blue route first..........
not sure if that was ideal but eyy... lmao. Honestly I found the story to be whack here
and I wasn't sure wtf I was even playing anymore.💀 Red route had IMO the better narrative
as it actually felt like we were going places especially on other branches during it, so while
the first route I did seemed like hot garbo the rest was pretty good.
The only time I disliked the route system was when I did green route, thankfully I did it last
or almost last but I don't understand why that stuff wasn't locked entirely till you do
red and yellow routes since by the time it does lock it reveals way too much.
After green route locked I had to jump to pink route and then back to green... then pink again.
I suppose they wanted to create a more serious route but also a true end route
but they couldn't do it both at the same time. This just lead to it being a hassle.
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| Aiba in a box out of context. |
point and click stuff. At times it is really obvious but you can select wrong choices
which often just lead to funny moments and ultimately wasting your time.
Those somnium sequences have a six minute limit, granted there are checkpoints but they
felt the need to make the retries limited so more often not you have to restart completely.
You can fast forward but if you can't figure it out it can still be frustrating. Also these
sequences can serve as route splits and on my second play I almost ended up on green route
when I wanted to go to red route. Thankfully at this point I was loosely following a guide.
Loosely because I still wanted to figure stuff out on my own.
I want to try to explain the somnium gameplay because hoo boy it had some mechanics?!
I can deal with having to retry during a somnium but time moves quite fast.
Every action costs time, some more than others and through random TIMIE's can help
reduce that but you can get screwed over because you can get negative TIMIE's.
I believe I didn't even understand this crap till I was at the end of my second route.
This just didn't feel right to me, some dream parts were of course easy
but some others were like LOL good luck! so if you constantly failed
trying to figure it out a more difficult dream this just gets too frustrating.
 |
| This action takes a lot of time but with that TIMIE it will only take 10 seconds. |
But yea to get those TIMIE's you have to look for them and do actions preferably
those who do not take much time, some of them are fixed and others random.
Let's not talk about negative TIMIE's though... let us not. (Traumatized.)💀
I will say that the one thing I hated about this game was that they sometimes
would replay mini scenes everytime the subject came up so you see someone getting
stabbed over and over which wasn't funny. It was especially bad in the 3rd dream
(if we count prologue). Thank god for fastforward in dream sequences though
but it was just annoying if this happened in VN segments.
Even in the pink epilogue they felt the need to replay a movie of someone dying
and I was like please can we not do this? we already know this.
In terms of characters; I liked the protagonist Kaname and Aiba wasn't that bad either
her name is actually a pun since she's literally an eyeball. Though at times it felt like Aiba
was more or less the brains of the duo not that Date was incompetent he can be a bit of a dork
and he is constantly roasted for his antics sometimes deserved other times not.
Kaname really does have his heart in the right place and he's not a bad person
but I did think the narrative actively tried to present him as such which I disliked.
 |
| Honestly I was perfectly in sync with Date when he said those words. |
Mizuki... I sympathized with her however she was a bit of a brat but kids
are allowed to be a bit bratty and she goes through a lot so I forgave most of it
especially by the time of yellow route cuz holy shit she went through hell.
God bless Kaname for being the adult in the room and taking her in.
Mizuki doesn't seem to care and their relationship seemed really stiff
like whatever atleast she had a bed to sleep in? Ok I guess.............
but that is mostly because she is a tsunderella and for some reason Kaname is too?!
yea two tsundere's in one house is going to be a party wew lad.
I will say that at first I didn't get why he adopted her but it all makes sense
I would too take this kid into protective custody because holy hell.
Iris the vtuber did grew on me and wasn't too bad but her route was
and at the end of it I couldn't really say I liked her much either.
I think this game had an anti-vtuber narrative because holy shit she's loco.💀
However despite her route being seemingly random... it was still important. Pink route
was much better in completing her story and after it I honestly wish her nothing but the best.
I neither liked or disliked Ota, i'm just really indifferent on him
to the point I don't even have many screenshots of him except where an NPC
is yelling like gordon ramsey and 1 other. I did like some developments
in red route. The family stuff made me sappy but that's about it.
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| Aww yea! finally a likeminded girl! |
sure about her. I would've liked to see more stuff with her but the story
went to other places beyond my imagination.
There were other characters like Pewter who is apparently gay or Moma
but I don't really have much of an opinion on them, like they played their part
in the narrative but that's about it really and I don't wanna go into spoilers too much.
I do gotta get this off my chest but while some it could be deserved this game was
way too focused on making Kaname look bad when he didn't even do anything.💀💀💀
Oh he talks to himself because of his AI eyeball and makes a fool of himself.
Some moments were deserved because ''gotta make a quick whiff'' was embarrassing.
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| Though somehow even lines like this were relevant in some way. |
That Moma guy was worse though since he even... incriminated Kaname during
some dialogue which turned me into a Kaname apologist because he did nothing wrong.
I find myself thinking other characters are always making Kaname look worse
when he is actually a half-decent guy. Side note; I found out Kaname is voiced
by the same guy (in JP) who voiced the priest in Trouble Magia so that was a revelation.
Needless to say Kaname was generally a good guy with his heart in the right place!
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| Gotta respect him for that tbh. |
TL;DR
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| The main villain in this game is exactly that. |
some caveats such as the point and click segments being just there for the sake of it.
Also while some jokes are fine I feel that there were too many dumb jokes
so it was hard to take it seriously. At first it felt more like a comedy game with a mystery.
Despite some somniums being annoying I still enjoyed progressing through the routes so
it wasn't too bad. I believe my play order made the story actually better because blue route
set the bar so low red route and beyond was smooth sailing for the rest of the narrative.
Also there's a theme of found family which was really beautiful, I loved yellow route.
Green route is where everything slowly started to fall into its place
and I really do think the mystery was well crafted, everything was revealed
at the right time, it was beautiful. However I didn't really enjoy psychin in the refrain
because it sucked if you made mistakes, you had to start over since there was very little time
but even then I noticed a pattern and there was definitely a way but this made me hate
the TIMie system and it showed that if you don't use it in a specific way you'll never clear.
7.5/10
I think i'd rate the story a 9/10 but the gameplay was just kinda eh so I have to subtract some points.
Also I cannot believe that if you play with JPN VA and eng text then the ending song will be in english.
Now the song itself wasn't bad but I can't believe they never fixed that... also there was a bug
where if you saved in Psychin in the Refrain it would give an error and fail. Thankfully
I could still load an old save and overwrite the failed save but it gave me nearly a panic attack.
TBH you cannot release a game in that state! maybe its not a big deal as long
as you don't save in somniums and keep a saves before it but its not a good look
to have a bug like that in the game, this game is 5-6 years old but the lack of QA is apparent.
I do want to talk about the routes so there will be light spoilers after the jump
because it is impossible to talk about them without spoiling something.
My play order was: Blue > Red > Yellow > Green > Pink >Green> Pink.
Yes green route can't be completed in one go, it has a lock that requires
you to do everything else as well as a little of pink route before that locks
till you actually complete green route in full. Weirdest route requirement ever.
If you were to play in this order you'll basically save the darker stuff for later, most of
blue route doesn't really makes sense at first and feels insignificant compared to red.
Blue route:
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| Not any more than you in this route Kaname. |
absolutely nowhere to the point where it might be good place to start.
I was fine with the random QTE event cuz it was kinda funny
and I guess the conspiracy theories were interesting
but a lot of stuff just sorta happens with no explanations.
Then you finish her second somnium and she's dying?! it felt like nothing
was explained properly and things just happened. The only thing I got out of this was
who Hitomi's BF was. But this was kinda obvious to me before its official reveal.💀
I felt proud of was solving the pentagram puzzle without a guide... but that's about it.
I was a bit upset by how little was explained in Iris route... I was left confused
cuz none of it was resolved properly and I had nothing but questions.
It also felt like the writing was way too indirect, like okay some of that is okay
but it seems they really went for a narrative dead end route. Anyway after this
I immediately went for red route in the hopes that it was explained elsewhere.
However I will say there were some parts here and there that where relevant, just not without context.
On its own it can look like Iris route didn't go anywhere at all. So just keep on playing
it'll make sense eventually. Like I can see people yay! cute vtuber-chan let's protect her
but eh... I think Kaname actually got out of character in this route and early on I got th
I don't want to do this energy from him but he ended up helping her anyways
which... lead us absolutely nowhere. Anti Vtuber agenda was real.
~
Red route.
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| Nah you're just an A-set simp. |
This which was actually much better and felt like I was actually diving into a deeper mystery
but other than that it felt like the majority of it were the building blocks that fell apart in green route.
I guess the bar was so low after Iris route that literally anything blew it out of the water.
Me after blue route: Is conspiracy theories all you got? Red route: Hold my beer!
Actually red route has two branching points one to green route and the other yellow route
but I ended up finishing red route in its entirety first! which focused on Ota.
While most of the Ota stuff is resolved which I found bittersweet this also didn't really
end properly however it did properly give some hints that there's more.
It pains me to admit but I took almost no screenshots with Ota in it and I am shook.
the whole story with his mother touched me cuz dementia is no easy subject
but other than that this felt fairly self-contained.
~
Yellow route.
Tbh this was pretty good. It finally went into some important stuff and also why
Kaname is Mizuki's guardian. The stuff with Mizuki was actually
rather heavy too but they did balance it out with some humor.
I couldn't take the repeated scene with the polar bear seriously though its odd but
it just got funnier everytime, like the opposite reaction to someone getting stabbed
but we finally get to see who coulda dunnit. Which was satisfying
and this route probably had the most well-rounded ending as well.
I didn't fully buy that a certain character was behind everything and there's
some loose threads that this route didn't touch upon but it did hint at something else.
Yellow route made me sad but also laugh a lot... but it had a good ending
still after what was next I am not sure if I feel safe here...................
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| Grenades are no big deal apparently... |
~
Green/Pink route:
 |
| Me too... |
This is where things started to get messy and grim, honestly
this felt like a bad end route and most of the fun is 404 not found.
On the bright side we finally get to go into what's really going on
however I could never in good consciousness recommend green route first
simply due to the fact it spoils way too much at once. Sure it locks at some point
but I am glad I did Iris, Ota, Mizuki's endings in that order before hitting that lock.
The lock felt a bit weird though because you have to part of the pink route
which has 2 locks because its the truth route. I think it should have been
handled better in a way pink route simply won't unlock till after green.
It makes sense to do it last because the plot reveals in red,yellow and some stuff
from blue come in small bits and this is the finishing touch albeit not very nicely.
Overall Green route ended up being a true bad end route in more ways than one
and mostly everything in the game made sense, some parts still confused me but it was
really satisfying to see it all come together and being lead to pink route one last time.
The ending of pink route was really satisfying and closes off the game really well
in a sense that it was the true good end and I am willing forgive the bullshit that happened
in green route because everything really did make sense thus it is a really satisfying mystery VN.
Oh yea I know it wasn't romance oriented but my heart melted when Hitomi
talked about her past and I also wish the ending of the game actually like mentioned
if she's gonna be a thing or not with Falco instead of leaving it up in the air.
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| This shit was written like a girls manga and I loved it. |
~
Final thoughts?!
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| This is how I felt 80% of the game especially after finishing early routes. |
Never played an Uchikoshi game but this was pretty good.
The characters were all great and the story was pretty interesting to figure out
but I didn't like the puzzles/minigame because it relied way too much on trial and error.
I'm fine with a little of that but there just wasn't enough time to enjoy it casually.
I get it had to be random nonsense because of the nonsensical nature of dreams
but I couldn't help to think they just went LMAO go figure it out by doing random stuff.
A lot of point and click segments could have just been cutscenes with choices as well
and it felt like you could just select random objects in the room just for the sake of it.
I don't need Kaname to tell me that is a box or a chair. Sometimes a funny dialogue
would happen if you selected something but if you miss it its nothing big.
The times you actually had to investigate the whole room were quite few.
I questioned Kaname's intellect especially during early route and more often
than not Aiba his partner seemed like the brains to his balls.💀
The game was too focused on making the protagonist look like a goofball as well
when other times he's shown to be a pretty down to earth guy. Like what?!
Other than that you basically had to do all routes to get the real story
and some routes really gave you a run for your money; looking at you Iris.
It is kind of sad that in most routes the main mystery never really is resolved
since it ends prematurely, like it solves some characters narrative and then rolls the credits
to throw you back into a flowchart. Iris was the worst with this since I was just left confused.
Atleast with Ota you actually got hints for your effort and Mizuki's route actually
felt like it had a proper ending but after green route I don't feel safe there. Maybe they
couldn't fit it all into one route but it makes half the routes just disconnected.
Green route was also almost too much for me but it showed how beautifully crafted the story is.
I guess the writer was like the gloves are off! and wanted to go all out but it was so weird
having to go to the real truth end midway and then back to grimmy route... to a proper resolution.
Anyways I liked it but I thought sometimes the pacing was off for half
the game since not every investigation will lead to the truth huh?
There was definitely a pattern of going places to investigate and then there
would be a somnium at the end, the first half could be a bit tiresome.
If this game had been any longer i'd go insanse ISTG.
It took me roughly 34 hours to finish all of the mainstory.
The humor its typical anime stuff and you gotta have some tolerance,
if random puns throw you off or are easily offended it may not be for you.
I'd still recommend it to mystery VN fans that don't mind whacky stuff.
7.5/10
I'd like to check out the sequel nirvana initiative sometime in the future but for now
I will probably peace out and try to find something to chill with till 9RiP sequel.
 |
| Even here it manages to find me... don't worry i'll get to it. |
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