#oneaday Day 20: Old Habits Die Hard

Ah, old habits do indeed die hard. First time around that I was doing this #oneaday thing, I had the habit of leaving the daily post until the last minute, meaning I’d often have to think of something to write when my brain was just shutting down ready to go to bed. And indeed that has happened this evening — though I do at least have an explanation for it, even if it’s not necessarily a “good” one.

I was finishing off a game I was playing. I wanted to beat it before Final Fantasy XIV’s new expansion Dawntrail opened to Early Access tomorrow, and indeed I did. I’ll probably write something a bit more coherent about it over on MoeGamer soon, but since it’s fresh in my mind right now, I’ll say a few words about it here.

The game is called Interrogation: You Will Be Deceived, and it’s something I picked up in a previous GOG.com sale (it’s also on Steam) because I thought it looked interesting. After finishing Shantae and the Seven Sirens a few days ago, I wanted something else short that I could plough through before Dawntrail so, browsing through my shelves and digital libraries, I eventually settled on Interrogation, as I shall refer to it hereafter.

Interrogation, as the name suggests, is about questioning suspects. Specifically, you play the role of a detective leading a task force given the job of unmasking and destroying an organisation known as the Liberation Front. The Liberation Front are an anarchistic organisation with a seemingly incoherent ideology; in the early stages of the game they seem like relatively small fry, but as the game’s plot escalates it becomes clear that they’re well up for a bit of terrorism, so it’s your job to both deal with the consequences of when they succeed at that, and hopefully prevent too many further atrocities from taking place.

The game isn’t specific about the time frame in which it’s set, but it’s presented in a noir style, complete with the vast majority of the visuals being in black and white. It’s clear that we’re either in the modern day or the very near future, though, by virtue of some of the technology that is referenced throughout the game. And one of the most effective things about the game is how plausible it feels; its main talking points are things that people really talk about (which, naturally, led to some particularly fragile Steam reviewers crying about it having “too much politics”) and concerns that people actually have.

It’s a surprisingly nuanced take on the subject, full of shades of grey. The Liberation Front, while ideologically incoherent, have some good points, which is, of course, what makes them so dangerous when they’re willing to resort to violence. Likewise, placing the player in the role of “the authorities” presents you with some interesting moral quandaries as to how you might handle the situation most effectively. Indeed, from the outset of the game you’re given the opportunity to handle your interrogations in a variety of ways, including through building empathy or inciting fear in your suspects — and even resorting to “enhanced interrogation” (read: violence) if the situation would seem to demand it.

Interestingly, the game provides the opportunity to play in a number of different ways; indeed, in my playthrough I took a “Pacifist” trait early on, which meant that I was unable to use any of the violent options in exchange for some other benefits that have slipped my mind. So you don’t have to play the game as an absolute monster in the service of The Man. Indeed, you have the opportunity to position yourself as sympathetic to the Liberation Front as you progress, though partway through the game you will find yourself on the other side of the table facing down a particularly violent representative from Internal Affairs, so you’d better be ready to back up your actions with some good explanations.

The whole thing was very atmospheric and I enjoyed it a lot. Like I say, I’ll write more about it on MoeGamer very soon, but wanted to just pen some initial impressions before I hit the sack this evening. Now it’s nearly half past one in the morning (guess I’m not getting up early tomorrow!) so I’d better wrap this up. So this is me, doing that.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

2490: Root Letter: Some First Impressions

0490_001

Today I’ve been playing a bunch of Root Letter from Kadokawa Games, localised and published by PQube over here. I’m honestly surprised that I’ve heard pretty much jack squat about this game except press releases from the publisher, because it’s turning out to be a most intriguing, enjoyable visual novel/adventure game hybrid.

Root Letter’s basic premise runs thus. 15 years ago, you were penpals with a high school girl named Aya Fumino. In total, you exchanged ten letters with one another before drifting apart, but one day, 15 years later, you discover an eleventh letter with no postmark. In this letter, Aya appears to confess to a murder, but gives no details about the crime, the victim or her current status. Understandably somewhat perturbed by this alarming discovery, you set off for her hometown with only her return address to guide you.

Upon arriving, you find an empty plot where her house is supposed to be, and quickly discover two rather strange stories: firstly, that while the Fumino house did indeed once stand on that plot, it burned down fifteen years ago; secondly, and more disturbingly, the only person by the name of “Aya Fumino” that people in the area seem to know died twenty-five years ago from a mysterious disease.

What unfolds from this point is a mystery story as you attempt to piece together what really happened to Aya — and, if the stories about her death are true, who the person you’ve been corresponding with actually is — by using her letters from 15 years ago as guidance. Using a combination of the information in the letters and evidence you gather through investigating scenes and conversing with various characters, you gradually come to figure out the identities of “Aya’s” classmates, each of whom theoretically hold a piece of the puzzle, but all of whom are extremely reluctant to speak of the past, and of their classmate — the girl you knew as Aya — in particular.

I’m roughly halfway through a first playthrough after a little over five hours, and I believe there are four discrete “routes” for the final two chapters to take, varying according to how you remember your replies to Aya’s letters went at the start of each chapter. It’s given me a solid idea of how the game works.

Essentially, it’s a modern take on old-school “ADV”-style visual novels such as Nocturnal Illusion in that you’re given an interface and a variety of actions to perform — including moving between locations, looking at things in a location, asking characters about topics, showing items from your inventory to characters and just standing around thinking — but in practice there’s generally only one “correct” option to push the story onward. At the end of most of the chapters, there’s an “investigation” sequence where you interrogate someone you suspect to be one of Aya’s classmates from 15 years ago, using knowledge you’ve obtained and physical evidence you’ve gathered to destroy their arguments.

If this all sounds a bit Ace Attorney, you’d be absolutely right; the structure is very similar, with the standard wandering around exploring gameplay mirroring Ace Attorney’s investigation sequences, and the interrogation sequences working much like the courtroom scenes, right down to having a limited number of chances to present the correct piece of evidence and proceed. Pleasingly, the interrogation sequences also feature some ridiculously overdramatic music that rivals Ace Attorney’s classic Pursuit ~ Cornered! theme in terms of ramping up the intensity.

One interesting mechanic the game has comes from the protagonist’s nickname “Max”, which comes from his apparent predilection to give things everything he’s got, even when it’s not strictly necessary to do so. In mechanical terms, this is represented as “Max Mode”, where a meter pulses up the sides of the screen with four different divisions, each representing a particular “intensity” of comment that you want to fling at someone. The bottom of the meter represents simple statements, moving up through lightly provocative, very provocative all the way to “I can’t believe you just said that”. When these sequences present themselves, you have a limited amount of time to determine how intensely would be appropriate to argue the point Max is presently debating, and the meter moves seemingly unpredictably at times, making it a bit of a test of reactions as much as choosing the right option. Fortunately for those blessed with less than stellar reflexes, you don’t lose a “life” if you get one of these wrong; you can simply try again.

Thus far the story has been highly intriguing and hinted at several different directions it could (and probably will) branch off into in its final chapters. The setup is an interesting one, and it’s satisfying to gradually see the truth slowly coming into focus as you progress. I have no idea what the actual “truth” is at this point, but I’m very interested to find out.

Since this game has had so little coverage on the Internet at large, I’m going to devote some time on MoeGamer to it at some point in the near future. Whether there’s enough to give it the full Cover Game treatment or if it will simply be a one-off article remains to be seen, but count on some more detailed thoughts once I’ve seen how the whole thing ends up.

For now, if you’ve been thinking about grabbing this, I’d say do so. And if you’ve never heard of it and enjoyed titles like Danganronpa or Ace Attorney, you’ll definitely want to give this one a go.

2346: Please Buy VA-11 HALL-A

0346_001

I’ve been playing a bunch of VA-11 HALL-A over the last couple of days, and I adore it. You can see some random screenshots and thoughts over on my Pile of Shame microblog.

I also wrote a review on Steam for it earlier, so I figured rather than spending time thinking of a different way to write the same enthusiastic words, I’d simply share it here, too.

I’ve been waiting to play the full version of this for quite some time now, ever since the very early demo enraptured me with its snappy writing, strong characterisation and wonderfully distinctive take on the dystopian future setting. And I’m delighted that the full version has, so far, surpassed all my expectations and hopes.

VA-11 Hall-A is kind of hard to pin down. At heart, it’s basically a visual novel, but rather than making binary choices that filter you off down one of several discrete routes, the choices you make as protagonist Jill when going about her daily life at home and at work affect what happens next in the story, including the characters you encounter, how Jill gets along with her clients and co-workers and how everyone reacts to the events unfolding in the backdrop.

Interestingly, VA-11 Hall-A presents its overarching narrative almost entirely from the perspective of Jill behind the bar and in her apartment. Significant things happen in the world, but you don’t see them directly; instead, you tend to see the people involved immediately before and/or after the events, or read about them on the news web pages and forums the morning after. Sometimes whether or not you dosed them up with alcohol before the event in which they were involved has an effect, too; prepare to feel guilty if that happens!

To give too many examples would be to spoil the experience, so I’ll leave it at this: VA-11 Hall-A does a much better job of almost any visual novel I can name at making its world feel “alive” and like the actions you take actually matter, rather than simply picking a route through the story. There’s nothing wrong with the latter approach, of course, but this way of doing things helps keep the people who expect a bit more in the way of traditional “gameplay” happy as well as those of us who are along for the ride primarily from a narrative perspective.

To sum up: great writing, wonderful characterisation, superb music and a glorious, beautiful PC-88 style aesthetic (with perfect pixel aspect ratio even scaled up to 1920×1080) makes for an absolutely lovely, unconventional and entirely memorable game.

I adore VA-11 Hall-A and pray with all my heart that it sees the success it deserves, both here on Steam and elsewhere on the Internet.

I haven’t yet finished a playthrough, but you better believe when I do there will be some detailed thoughts and feelings about the whole thing going up either here or over on MoeGamer (from which my previous article on the game’s demo is quoted on the Steam store page! Awesome!) — so watch out for those.

This is exactly the sort of highly creative, wonderfully inventive, beautifully presented and sharply written stuff I love to see from the indie scene. And I hope it becomes the sensation it sincerely deserves to be.

Find out more about the game and buy it — please, please, please buy it — on the official site.

2250: Is There Anything More to ‘Senran Kagura 2’ Than Big, Bouncing Cartoon Breasts?

0250_001

Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson is actually something of an increasing rarity in the modern games sphere: it’s a sequel that actually rewards knowledge of its predecessors rather than acting as a standalone story or reboot. For sure, you can play through Deep Crimson without having played Senran Kagura Burst or Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus — despite the “2” in the title, this is actually the third in the series canonically, or fourth if you count the original Japanese release of the first half of Burst as Senran Kagura: Portrait of Girls — but you will get far, far more out of it if you have knowledge of the setting, characters and backstory of what’s going on.

Senran Kagura as a series concerns itself with the happenings in the secret world of the shinobi. Trained in secret at specialised academies, shinobi are split into two main groups: “good” and “evil”. “Good” shinobi follow orders, help people, Do No Wrong, that sort of thing. “Evil” shinobi do the more shadowy work that is more traditionally associated with those of the ninja persuasion — assassination, espionage and generally being a bit of a bastard without anyone finding out about it until it’s much too late.

youma1 Life can’t be interpreted in such black-and-white terms, however; there are myriad shades of grey, and this becomes particularly apparent over the course of the Senran Kagura series’ overarching narrative threads and themes. In Senran Kagura Burst, the “good” shinobi of Hanzou Academy came to understand a little more about their “evil” Hebijo counterparts and that they weren’t so different despite their theoretically opposing ideologies; in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus, we learned the truth about this stark good-evil divide: it’s an artificially created construct intended to provoke bloodshed between the two opposing sides, the net result of which lures horrific creatures known as youma out of the darkness so they can be slain by high-ranking shinobi.

In Deep Crimson, the questions over what “good” and “evil” really mean are further raised when the Hanzou students are tasked with initially capturing and then slaying a young girl called Kagura. Kagura, it seems, is destined to fend off the youma in particularly spectacular fashion, so surely the “good” shinobi want to keep her safe rather than splatter her over the nearest wall? Being good little, well, good shinobi, though, they set about making preparations for their mission, because good shinobi follow orders and don’t question them. It takes the “evil” shinobi of Homura’s Crimson Squad — the former Hebijo students — to convince them to think for themselves and realise that questioning this sort of drastic action is really probably okay if you stop to think about it for just a moment or two. And indeed, there’s quite a lot more to Kagura than initially appears.

youma2 In Senran Kagura Burst, the relationships between the Hanzou and Hebijo girls was explored through each of them fighting one another and coming to an understanding with their opposing counterpart. It was revealed that “evil” is actually a more inclusive concept than “good” in the world of Senran Kagura, since “good” can turn people away for “not being good enough”, while “evil” accepts everyone, no matter how nice or nasty they might have been in the past. Indeed, Burst’s storyline — particularly the Hebijo-specific path — takes great pains to humanise the Hebijo girls and depict them as interesting, flawed and often tragic characters who all have their own reasons for turning to the darker path.

In Deep Crimson, these relationships are further explored in a number of different ways, both through the narrative and through the game mechanics. A significant addition to Burst’s 2.5D brawling action is the ability to play missions in cooperative pairs, either with another player on a second 3DS system or with the AI taking control of the other character and you being able to switch the one you’re in direct control of at will. The game’s narrative makes a point of putting “opposing” — or perhaps it’s better to say “complementary” — characters together; here, rather than fighting against each other, as in Burst, the girls come to understand one another better by fighting alongside one another against the shared threat of the youma. This doesn’t, of course, preclude the fact that a number of comic misunderstandings lead to physical altercations between these pairs at several points in the story — Senran Kagura as a series has always known how to strike a good balance between pathos, drama and humour — but the net result of all the girls’ battles right up until the end of the game is that they all come to understand, appreciate and like one another better.

youma3 This paired-up action is more than just a gimmick, too; the way it’s presented really creates a strong sense of these characters being real people and having actual feelings towards one another. Whether it’s the tomboyish, loudmouthed Katsuragi giving the emotionless Hikage an enthusiastic high-five after a successful combat or the dour but utterly besotted Yagyuu catching her darling Hibari in a perfect princess hold after a joint special attack, the game’s beautiful animations are absolutely packed with personality, giving each character both a unique look and feel, making them all instantly recognisable.

This uniqueness extends to the way each of the girls plays as well. Far more so than in Senran Kagura Burst, at least, each girl has a very different fighting style, with their own unique button combinations required to unleash combo attacks and specific moves. While you can get away with button-mashing to a certain degree early in the game, once you start fighting more powerful bosses — and even more powerful individual enemies — factors such as positioning, launching, air control and dodging become significantly more important, and there are even some RPG-style status effects to inflict and contend with, just to make things that little bit more interesting.

Each character’s three special moves are unique, too; while some are simple area-effect nukes around the character position, others are charge attacks across the arena, good for cutting through swathes of enemies, while others have more specialised uses that can turn the tide of battle in your favour. Of particular note is Haruka’s “Death Kiss” move, which charms anyone hit with a large heart-shaped projectile and prevents them from attacking for a brief period; frustrating and combo-breaking when it hits you, massively useful when you’re able to do it yourself.

youma4 Unfolding across five separate chapters — each with an escalating focus and scope from the previous — and culminating with some dramatic moments of personal growth and epic conflict in the final chapter, Deep Crimson’s narrative is a strong one that is paced well and feels like it’s the series really hitting its stride. While Burst in particular felt like it was more concerned with introducing the characters and their relationships with one another — no bad thing in a series as characterisation-focused as this — Deep Crimson feels like the overall narrative of the series is moving significantly forwards. The characters aren’t treading water: their personal growth in the previous installments is acknowledged and used as a basis for this game’s narrative to build on, and this is where the particularly rewarding aspect of complete series familiarity comes in. It has, so far, been an absolute pleasure to witness these girls growing up and finding out more about themselves, their place in the world as people — and their place in the world as shinobi.

As I say, you can absolutely get some appreciation out of Deep Crimson if considering it in a vacuum, but the Senran Kagura series as a whole is at its most rewarding when you take in every piece of information available out there: creator Kenichiro Takaki and his team have created a very strong and believable setting and sense of context across these games, with some wonderfully human-feeling characters that interact with one another in relatable, believable ways — even when they’re being silly rather than serious. Like other prolific Japanese series such as Neptunia, the cast has transcended its original context to become a convincing set of “virtual actors” who wouldn’t feel out of place in situations other than fighting for their lives — indeed, we’ve already seen them put their weapons down and do other things in the immensely silly (but immensely entertaining) Senran Kagura Bon Appetit — and I sincerely hope that we see a lot more of these girls in the coming years.

Fortunately, I needn’t lament that my time with them has come to a close with the conclusion of Deep Crimson’s story, since Estival Versus has just released and is eagerly awaiting insertion into my PS4. More thoughts on that to come when I’ve spent some time with it.

Oh, hold on now, I didn’t answer the question in the headline, did I?

YES

2070: Michiru, the Girl in the Box

Finished Michiru’s route in The Fruit of Grisaia today, and my goodness is there a lot to process.

It doubtless goes without saying, but major spoilers for Michiru’s route ahead. I’ll put in a “More” tag for those who care about such things. Hit the jump for the full story.

Continue reading “2070: Michiru, the Girl in the Box” →

1670: At Your Side

[Edit, 16/08: Apologies for those who missed this yesterday — it seems I composed an entry and then didn’t publish it properly. I present it now, better late than never. As if you care.]

So I finally finished Sweet Fuse this evening and I’m very happy I did.

For those disinclined to look back over my previous entries about this game, here’s the quick version: it’s a visual novel for PSP (Vita-compatible) in which you play Saki Inafune, niece of Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune, as she gets trapped in a theme park at the behest of a terrorist dressed as a pig. Along the way, she encounters a selection of fine-looking gentlemen and, over the course of seven days, gets to know at least one of them very well indeed.

Sweet Fuse has an utterly ridiculous premise, but ultimately it’s little more than a gimmick or hook to draw you in to the game proper: the story itself plays itself admirably and consistently straight throughout, not being afraid to tone down the light-hearted humour in favour of some pathos or outright tragedy at times. Saki herself is at times a little ill-defined as a character, but such is the nature of the visual novel protagonist, whether they’re male or female: they have to be flexible enough to make the various routes through the narrative plausible, and also non-specific enough to make them identifiable with for a wide proportion of the audience.

The nice thing about Sweet Fuse’s story is that you don’t get the whole truth in a single playthrough. In fact, depending on which of the game’s cast members you choose to pursue, you might not get the truth at all. Follow the path for Towa Wakasa, young boy band idol, and you’ll have an enjoyably romantic little tale in which you find out a bit about Wakasa himself — and how Saki feels about him — but you’ll learn almost nothing about the motivations behind Hogstein’s hijack of the park and the deadly game he makes the cast play. (You do, however, get a tiny teaser which is easily missed if you’re not paying attention.) Conversely, play through the route for Subaru Shidou, detective originally intended to be in charge of the park’s security on its opening day, and you’ll get tantalisingly close to the complete truth without revealing absolutely everything. It’s not until you play the route for the “secret” character, which only opens up from a second playthrough onwards, that you get a full, final and complete explanation of what has truly been going on.

And, without spoiling it here, I was surprised at the nature of the truth. As previously noted, the expectation for Sweet Fuse, given its premise and setup, is for the story to be rather light-hearted in nature — and indeed, there’s a lot of self-consciously ridiculous stuff that goes on. But ultimately there’s a serious core to what has been going on — and it doesn’t feel out of place, despite the fact that the villain you’re pursuing throughout the narrative is almost constantly dressed as a cigar-smoking pig with a disco ball around his neck.

Ultimately, your response to Sweet Fuse will depend on how much you care for the rather “hands-off” nature of most visual novels: despite the premise of the game being somewhat akin to the Zero Escape series, there are no real “puzzles” to solve as such; the most you have to do throughout the game is pick the right choice when one comes up, or occasionally pick out the most important word or phrase from a monologue in order to proceed. In other words, the game is extremely light on “gameplay” and this may disappoint a few people — particularly given that the theme park that forms the game’s setting is supposed to be based on video games — but it works and, on reflection, is probably a sensible choice; breaking up the game with, well, “gameplay”, would break its flow and run the risk of you not being able to proceed due to, to put it politely, a deficit in your own skills. By handling it this way, anyone can see the story through to its conclusion, and thanks to convenient quicksave, fast-forward and rewind functions, going back to see other possible outcomes to various scenarios is quick and painless, too. I played through two whole routes in a single day today, albeit fast-forwarding through the first three “common route” chapters and just making the appropriate choices where necessary. That still left four unique chapters per character, though.

I’m glad I played through Sweet Fuse, as it ended up being really, surprisingly good. I was immediately intrigued by the premise — and I love seeing the face of people when I explain it to them — but what I found was actually rather different from what I expected, in a very positive way.

If you have a Vita or a PSP and are hungry for an interesting story-based game to while away some time with, you could do far worse than a copy of Sweet Fuse, then. Highly recommended.

1549: HOUOUIN KYOUMA

Still not finished Steins;Gate — it’s long! — but I wanted to talk about it a bit more, as I played it a whole bunch this evening and think I may be closing in on one of the games several endings.

Like most good visual novels, Steins;Gate does an excellent job of drawing you into its world and helping you understand its protagonist. Despite being entirely composed of static images, character portraits and very occasional “event” images — much like every other visual novel — it manages to craft an extremely convincing setting. Or perhaps, given the game’s focus on manipulation of time, the many-worlds interpretation and all manner of other goodness (this isn’t a spoiler, by the way; it’s a core theme of the whole thing), it would be more accurate to say “settings”.

One of the most interesting things about the game is the effort to which Nitroplus (and, by extension, the translators) has gone to ensure that all the background detail in the world is consistent, detailed and, in many instances, based rather obviously on reality. An extensive in-game glossary allows you to look up information on a variety of different keywords that appear throughout the course of the narrative and dialogue — and these cover a range of subjects from real-life scientific theory to popular hypotheses put forward by science fiction, snippets of otaku culture, online culture, and “chuunibyou” conspiracy theories. Although the game takes obvious pains to twist things slightly from their real-life counterparts — IBM becomes IBN, for example; CERN becomes SERN; names of popular anime and manga get similarly bastardised — it’s obvious that a lot is based on things from the actual, real world, and consequently it’s hard not to feel like the game is subtly sneaking some genuine knowledge into your brain as you play it.

Okay, a lot of it may not be all that useful unless you have an otaku friend who constantly drops references you don’t understand (Hi!) or are acquainted with a conspiracy theorist nutjob, but it’s interesting that it’s in there nonetheless — plus it helps provide a lot of the narrative with an interesting degree of context. It’s also just plain cool for a narrative to be based on real-life urban legends such as John Titor and the question of what CERN are really up to with their Large Hadron Collider.

Aside from all that, though, Steins;Gate is simply a phenomenally well-written visual novel. It’s long and wordy, sure, but all the exposition in the game’s early chapters really pays off with some wonderfully strong character development. The protagonist in particular is a fascinating individual; being a “chuunibyou” conspiracy theorist himself with delusions of being a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma — a name his voice actor takes considerable delight in bellowing every time it comes up in the script — makes him far more interesting to inhabit the head of than many other “blank slate” protagonist characters seen in other visual novels. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with those — they often fit well with more “dating sim”-style stories in which the protagonist is usually intended to be a self-insert for the player — but, well, yes. Steins;Gate makes a convincing case for the protagonist being a strong character in their own right.

Anyway, three solid hours of reading earlier have driven my eyes a bit squiffy so I’m off to bed. Further thoughts will doubtless follow when I’ve finished the damn thing.

1535: El Psy Kongroo

I’ve already written on the subject at some length over on USgamer, but on the offchance you haven’t paid us a visit recently, I thought I’d wax lyrical about my initial experiences with Steins;Gate here, too.

Steins;Gate, for the unfamiliar, is a visual novel from popular developer Nitroplus, whose name you may remember from the excellent “giant robots fight Cthulhu” visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane that I played a while back. Unlike Demonbane, it’s not an eroge — though Demonbane’s sex scenes were, for the most part, more horrifying and uncomfortable than anything else — but it’s still an unabashedly adult affair, just one without any graphic uglies-bumping. It’s an enormously well-respected title, known better to most people in the West through its apparently excellent anime adaptation, and an official English localisation has been a long time coming. But come it finally has, thanks to localisation and visual novel specialists JAST USA — one of my favourite publishers in the world for the last few years — and finally everyone can get in on the action.

Steins;Gate is a science fiction tale that, for the few hours I’ve played so far, centres largely around the concept of time travel and parallel worlds. The main character is a gloriously chaotic individual afflicted with chuunibyou (“middle school second-grade syndrome”) — he’s utterly convinced that he’s a mad scientist and that he’s being pursued by a shadowy group called The Organization. Whether or not his delusions turn out to be true or not remains to be seen, but it’s certainly an interesting setup; much like Demonbane put the player in the shoes of a protagonist that was a character in their own right rather than an obvious blank-slate cipher, so too does Steins;Gate.

This time around, the narrative influences aren’t drawn from Lovecraft, but instead from popular science and science fiction, both Eastern and Western. The game makes frequent references to real-life concepts, particularly with regard to topics like time travel and parallel world theories as well as the real-life modern-day myth of time traveller John Titor. The game makes unsubtle changes to things it mentions throughout (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure becomes Juju’s Bizarre Adventure, for example, while the IBM 5100 computer Titor supposedly travelled back in time to retrieve becomes an IBN 5100), presumably to avoid breaching about a bajillion copyrights, but it’s always clear what it really means. There’s a constantly updated glossary you can refer to as you play, too, that gradually fills up with a wealth of information ranging from Japanese cultural tidbits to scientific and technology history.

It’s clearly a setting that has had a lot of thought poured into it. In many ways, although the premise, style and genre are completely different, Steins;Gate reminds me of Aselia the Eternal in the sense that the writers obviously had a very clear vision of how their version of the world worked and how the various characters fit into it all. This was very true in the case of Aselia the Eternal, which I maintain has one of the most well-realised, well-depicted fantasy worlds of any game I’ve ever played, despite the inherent restrictiveness of the visual novel genre, and is already shaping up to be very true in the case of Steins;Gate. Nitroplus’ title goes a step further with all the supplementary information you can refer to as you play — not to mention the fact that clicking the “Internet” option on your in-game phone opens an actual website for the main character’s “Future Gadget Lab”.

And speaking of the phone, the means through which you interact with Steins;Gate is bizarre and intriguing. Rather than making the usual binary choices that visual novels tend to present you with, Steins;Gate instead makes use of the protagonist’s phone as its main means of interaction. As you progress, you’ll receive email messages from characters and have the option to respond to them or not; you’ll also receive phone calls and have the option of answering them or not answering them, and various other things will happen in and around your phone. The choices you make as to whether or not you engage with these various distractions determine the paths down which the plot proceeds, giving the flow of the story a much more “natural” feel than some visual novels with extremely obvious decision points. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

Anyway. I’m but a short way into the overall plot as a whole as I type this and thus there’s not a lot more I can say thus far save for the fact that I’m really enjoying it and looking forward to seeing where it goes. It’s an immediately intriguing, compelling tale with some fascinating, unconventional characters and an utterly gorgeous art style, so if you’re looking for a new interactive story to delve into, I’d encourage you to check it out and grab a copy as soon as you can.

1483: Virtue’s Almost-Last Reward

I will finish this game. I will finish this game. It’s been 40 hours. It’s a matter of pride now.

There may be mild spoilers for Virtue’s Last Reward in this post. There will almost certainly be spoilers for 999. I haven’t quite worked out what I’m going to write yet; I just feel like I need to do something like a brain dump in order to try and work out what on Earth is going on.

Putting in a “read more” tag so those casually browsing the front page don’t run into any spoilers… see you after the jump if you’re continuing to read.

Continue reading “1483: Virtue’s Almost-Last Reward” →

1157: The ‘Fandisc’ Experience

So having finally completed Kira Kira (which is excellent, by the way — one of the best visual novels I’ve had the pleasure of playing to date) I decided to make a start on its semi-sequel Kira Kira Curtain Call, which is considerably shorter and more of a spin-off than a full sequel. Technically, it’s a “fandisc”, which is a concept I hadn’t come across prior to getting into the visual novel medium.

I’m assuming this probably means that you aren’t familiar with it either, in that case, what with VNs being rather niche and all. Basically it’s exactly what it sounds like: it’s a disc (or download) of extra content that continues where the main game left off. Sometimes it involves the same characters, sometimes it has side stories. It’s usually considerably shorter than the original game, too, but it’s a standalone game in its own right rather than an addon. I guess the closest equivalent in Western gaming would be a standalone expansion pack or piece of DLC.

Not many of these fandiscs make it over to the West, for some reason, though there are a few that have. Persona 3 FES could be considered a fandisc, for example, due to its 20-hour extra campaign that ties up the loose ends left by Persona 3’s main campaign. Corpse Party: Book of Shadows could be considered a fandisc for the original Corpse Party, too, since it fleshes out (no pun intended) a number of the incidental characters from the original before continuing the plot in preparation for a true sequel. And Kira Kira’s English-language publisher Mangagamer have taken to translating and releasing some of these fandiscs for the more popular visual novels out there — Kira Kira is one of them.

Kira Kira Curtain Call is a two-part follow-up to the events of Kira Kira, and stars a mostly new cast of characters. Unfolding several years after Kira Kira’s conclusion (and assuming that the “True End” was, well, true), the game initially begins with the player in the role of Souta Honda, a passionate, fiery-haired young man who is angry and frustrated at the world, and wants nothing more to express himself through the medium of rock music. At the same time, though, he doesn’t want the trappings of fame that being a famous musician begins — indeed, shortly after the game begins, we see him thrown into a sexual situation with two groupies and an old senpai who is now a member of a successful band, and he refuses to take part.

Souta, you see, is desperately in love with a girl named Yui, and herein lies one of the reasons why Curtain Call is such an interesting and distinct experience from the original game. Rather than the first part of the game allowing the player to get to know the characters and then, through their choices, progressing down one of their “routes” to their eventual conclusion, in Curtain Call we begin with a protagonist who is already obsessed with the object of his affections. In what I’ve played so far, Yui’s feelings towards Souta are somewhat ambiguous, but it’s clear that there’s some affection there despite Souta’s previous advances leaving her with mild androphobia.

Souta is a marked contrast to the original game’s protagonist Shikanosuke. Initially, Shika was a guy very much caught up in a tidal wave of events that you always felt were slightly beyond his control — though it was abundantly clear by the end of the story that he was genuinely enjoying himself despite spending a good half of the game in drag — but he grew and changed in various ways according to which of the three heroines’ paths he proceeded down. Each of the paths had something in common, though: the fact that the main cast’s band left an indelible mark on their high school of Oubi Academy, and you get a real sense of this fact in Curtain Call. In a nice touch, Shikanosuke’s sister Yuko, who was often heard but never seen in the original Kira Kira, is one of the main supporting characters in Curtain Call and has even been very obviously designed to resemble Shikanosuke in drag to an almost uncomfortable degree.

Other characters put in an appearance, too: the second half of the game (which I haven’t reached yet) focuses on one of Kira Kira’s supporting characters and his attempts to make his own band. In one of the routes through the original game, Shikanosuke becomes part of this group as he attempts to [SPOILER REDACTED] but in the “True End”, we simply hear that this band exists.

All in all, I really like the idea of a “fandisc”. It provides the potential for a story to continue and for the game’s world to be considerably more fleshed out even after the main game has concluded. Of course, you have to be careful not to outstay your welcome — Persona 3 FES ran into this issue with its immensely frustrating, cheap boss fights — but if you handle it well, it gives the player the opportunity to spend just a little more very welcome time in a game world with some characters and settings that they have become very fond of. While I was completely satisfied with the way Kira Kira concluded in all its various routes, I’m happy to have the chance to see “what happened next” and take part in the extension of that story.