#oneaday Day 79: Late Night

Good morning! For once a late post isn't my fault — Patreon was throwing 503 errors at me when I went to post last night, so I was unable to publish this then.

Okay, it may well have been my fault for attempting to publish at 1:30 in the morning, but that's actually what I wanted to talk about today.

I've come to associate late nights with beating video games. Which makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it; given that the daytime tends to hold "adult" responsibilities (boo) the most likely time a vaguely normally functioning member of society will finish a game is last thing at night. Particularly if you're me, and you don't like to leave a story "hanging" when it's become pretty obvious that you're almost at the end.

Such was the case last night with 428: Shibuya Scramble. I started playing the last time block of the game after dinner, and knew that, more likely than not, I was going to beat the game that evening. Or, more specifically, I felt that with the knowledge I was on the last chapter, I was going to make a specific effort to see it through to the end that evening, however long it took.

I love endings and finales, particularly those in Japanese games, because if there's one thing Japanese devs are great at, it's a good finale. Whether it's a spectacular final boss fight in an RPG or just a culmination of all the narrative paths as in 428: Shibuya Scramble, there's something about the last few hours of a narrative-centric Japanese game that will just keep me playing until the small hours.

In the case of 428: Shibuya Scramble, the finale sequence was interesting in that it was by far the most "complex" of all the chapters in terms of making choices and having to jump back and forth between characters in order to clear "Keep Outs". There are even two more playable protagonists in this finale sequence who have just been supporting characters up until this point — and just to further add to the complexity, if you get a Bad End in this final chapter, you do not get a hint as to what you did wrong, unlike in the rest of the game. And there are a lot of Bad Ends in the final chapter!

Ultimately I managed to unravel the mystery and clear the game, however, even apparently managing to get the "true" ending first time rather than just the normal ending. There are a bunch of other endings and unlockables, though, so I will be exploring those before my time with the game is over. I'm especially interested to see the additional scenario that was composed by the creators of Fate/stay night.

I'll be writing more about the main narrative of the game (additional content notwithstanding) either today or tomorrow on MoeGamer, so watch out for that. In the meantime, if you're yet to experience this unusual, chaotic masterpiece, I can highly recommend the experience!