Also my copy is still nowhere to be seen.. Fortunately I have Link's Awakening and Clannad to finish, but I am a bit worried since the shipping is not tracked and it should come my place's work where some receptionist will pick it up. Moreover I am reading all good reviews here in the OT, so it must be really another Uchikoshi's masterpiece, and I am really looking forward to playing it.
Finished it over the weekend. I've played everything that Uchikoshi has written that is available in English (unless Riven12's fan translation has been released?), and overall I think that this is probably right in the middle of them in terms of how much I liked it, it was still extremely good. Very easy to recommend and I'm happy I played it.
In spite of the juvenile sex humour, I was consistently impressed with how mature (in the "geared towards older adults" sort of way, not in the "edgy" way) the main themes are. That alone made the game worth it for me, everything else was just icing on the cake.
I don't think there's any visual novel out there that focuses so much on the experience of being a parent in particular, as opposed to the child's perspective. Parenting is a theme I just can't get enough of. This writer DADs.
As a person who was abused by my bio parents, I'm also sick to death about stories of how biological parents are inherently important even when they have a bad or no relationship with their children, so the fact that Date and Hitomi both ended up being unrelated to their child but were the TRUE parents of their children nonetheless was SO good. I also appreciated the contrast between how Hitomi and Shoko handled their colicky children, with Hitomi being the better mother.
There's one thing I have to disagree with that's been mentioned in this thread though about recycling twists. He definitely uses one he's used before, but it doesn't bother me for certain reasons.
If I say which game it takes it from it instantly becomes a spoiler for both, so only look after you've finished AI, and if you don't care about being spoiled for his other stuff.
This game uses the twist that Remember11 used, which is that the main character ends up having swapped bodies but is also the amnesiac lover of another character in the game - at the same time, this never actually HAPPENS in Remember11 because the game abruptly ends before the true ending is slated to begin due to budgetary reasons. So it never bothered me. In fact, it's good to see this twist finally reach its natural conclusion after all these years!
why porn lol? Was she rewiring murder excitement into porn one? From my understanding she was just supplying the gland so it he wouldn't carve it, but he could still get kick off it if he went too far.
I always thought when he was X-Raying and getting excited it was because of bones and implied death (so I was kinda wrong but also kinda right).
Plus Falco seems like grounded guy, not a pervert in the slightest
The point of Aiba's dosing was to just regulate him to normal levels. She wasn't specifically wiring him to get excited over porn, that's just Falco/Date's personality. Date still cracks the same sex jokes in the epilogue as Falco. He still sniffs the Sagan's shoebox and Hitomi says that he hasn't changed a bit. When he examines the Sagan's sound system, Iris asks if he's imagining that it's a dick again and says that he used to make that joke all the time.
Read earlier in the thread that there was a day one patch, was that for the Switch version as well? I tried updating the game and it's telling me that I'm already on the latest version (1.0).
I'm at around day 4 now. Starting to enjoy it now that the plot seems to be moving. I felt the opening was pretty slow.
I like the story so far, but the constant juvenile sex jokes are pretty distracting and unnecessary. It feels like someone wrote a decent story, and then someone else stepped in and decided to insert stupid middle school humour everywhere. I think they've all made me roll my eyes instead of laugh, so now I'm wondering if I'm just older than the target audience for this game. Same goes for the anime cutesy dance shit. I just feel too old for it.
I like the MC and his supporting cast so far. Most of the people outside his unit are annoying, though. Date and Aiba have great voice acting and generally good banter.
I think that's in there just to appeal to the otaku/anime market more. I see that style of storytelling in Japanese media in certain manga and anime sometimes. The tone is really all over the place. It wants to be a murder mystery story but is really goofy as well. Some of the humour is amusing, some of it also doesn't land well and is cringe.
I think that's in there just to appeal to the otaku/anime market more. I see that style of storytelling in Japanese media in certain manga and anime sometimes. The tone is really all over the place. It wants to be a murder mystery story but is really goofy as well. Some of the humour is amusing, some of it also doesn't land well and is cringe.
I agree that it's in there to pander to a subset of its audience. It's kind of like how every jrpg has a token loli character, to which part of the audience just rolls their eyes and moves on. Same goes for stuff like Mayuri's super cutesy attitude in Steins Gate. It's there, but you just kinda ignore it in favor of the rest of the story.
It's just that this stuff somehow feels much more egregious in this game than in other anime games I've played. I'm not sure if the game is laying it on extra thick, or if I'm just getting old and have way less tolerance for this stuff than before.
Technically finished my first playthrough.
I was doing the green path but it locked. I guess it's like VLR where I have to complete the paths in a certain order.
The thing is I feel this route spoils too much. I have to do the other routes but I don't think they'll have the same effect knowing
Boss is the New Cyclops Killings murderer and that #89 is the old one.
BTW, should I continue with the other Mizuki's Somnium path or with Iris'?
Technically finished my first playthrough.
I was doing the green path but it locked. I guess it's like VLR where I have to complete the paths in a certain order.
The thing is I feel this route spoils too much. I have to do the other routes but I don't think they'll have the same effect knowing
Boss is the New Cyclops Killings murderer and that #89 is the old one.
BTW, should I continue with the other Mizuki's Somnium path or with Iris'?
I always went back to the most recent split and filled out the entire branch before returning to the first split in Mizuki's Somnium, but it's up to you. The green route was my first as well, you shouldn't be that worried about it having spoiled too much.
Technically finished my first playthrough.
I was doing the green path but it locked. I guess it's like VLR where I have to complete the paths in a certain order.
The thing is I feel this route spoils too much. I have to do the other routes but I don't think they'll have the same effect knowing
Boss is the New Cyclops Killings murderer and that #89 is the old one.
BTW, should I continue with the other Mizuki's Somnium path or with Iris'?
As someone who got Green route first too, I recommend
Go back to Iris and unlock everything you can from there. When you can't progress any further, go back to Mizuki and do the other side of the flowchart.
Was the B route for psyncin' in the pain available from the start?
Somnium altering things that already happened in the real world seems like a revelation that's meant for later. Already did the Ota and Mizuki endings and reached a 'classified' in psyncin' in the curtain.
Was the B route for psyncin' in the pain available from the start?
Somnium altering things that already happened in the real world seems like a revelation that's meant for later. Already did the Ota and Mizuki endings and reached a 'classified' in psyncin' in the curtain.
that shootout sequence was PAINFULLY stupid. God, that was embarrassingly dumb.
I hated Iris' Somnium. Fuck, I didn't even want to hear that stupid anime YouTuber song once, and her somnium plays it in its entirety several times. It's not cute. Just let me skip the fucking sequences and move on with these shitty "lol look at all this random shit I'm doing" bits that pretend to be puzzles but in reality are anything but.
I'm enjoying the story, but there's a whole lot of dumb shit in this game. The gameplay parts of it feel arguably worse than Danganronpa, and that's a low fucking bar.
Cleared what I believe is the next to last route, the
Annihilation
route.
I'm pretty sure this means that:
In Mizuki's route, So is in Iris' body. Which is absolutely freaking hilarious.
At least that one's mostly a good end still all things considered, with Date and Mizuki getting closer and the Cyclops Killer being stopped completely inadvertently. Not a perfect ending, but not a totally unhappy one either.
Finished this over the weekend and enjoyed it--the start was slow, but over the various routes the characters grew on me and I realized how fully I'd bought in when
I was in the process of reflecting on how, over the course of the game, Invincible Rainbow Arrow grew on me to the point I no longer loathed hearing it, only to have Mizuki bust in with her verse and have it escalate to THIS ENDING IS FANTASTIC.
Having only played the Nonary games and this from Uchikoshi, I'd probably go with this being the most satisfying game--it's not as good as 999 or VLR as a package with the gameplay issues in the Somnium sequences and the story isn't as mind-blowing (common opinions, based on this thread), and it might just be how I went through the routes but I felt a lot more guided down set paths than in the other games, but I walked away from it feeling content with how things ended, not hanging on for a sequel, no real big outstanding questions. And that guided experience did end up making me really appreciate some of the reveals.
The shooting sequences and a lot of the sex stuff were terrible, but it wasn't enough to mar the overall experience for me.
It's literally sold out everywhere I looked. I just settled on getting it digitally in the end up. Actually legit surprised it sold out considering how quiet the hype had been for this game pre-release.
Read earlier in the thread that there was a day one patch, was that for the Switch version as well? I tried updating the game and it's telling me that I'm already on the latest version (1.0).
It's literally sold out everywhere I looked. I just settled on getting it digitally in the end up. Actually legit surprised it sold out considering how quiet the hype had been for this game pre-release.
Thanks, the game wasn't released digitally in my country for whatever reason so I didn't know if that was the cause or what was happening. I hope there's nothing too important in that patch :/
Thanks, the game wasn't released digitally in my country for whatever reason so I didn't know if that was the cause or what was happening. I hope there's nothing too important in that patch :/
anyone on PS4 have a problem saving at the begining of the psync in psyncin in the refrain? i can save before i psync but as soon as i'm in it it the ps4 gives me an error code and refuses to save but continues to update the save file time
edit: must be a bug with the game in that area, it let me save after i beat it
I just finished Ota and Mizukis route (and the green path is still locked..) so I'm going to start the right side of the flowchart.
I have two theories about the killer.
1) This isn't really likely because So was the one who tried to kill Iris and Ota, and I also know Boss is somehow involved.. My theory is Iris died, and then someone made more than one identical robot to replace her. This would explain the prerelease ARG. Another small detail I've noticed is that she is next to Aiba (Who is an AI) in the promotional art for the game. She can also lie extremely easy (like a robot). The problem with this theory is that she has a mum... unless she doesn't know the real Iris was replaced with a fake one.
Considering the yakuza gang loved Iris it's possible So was also her acquaintance and she convinced him to kill another copy of her (and technically Ota). She probably killed Shoko and Renju.
2) There are multiple New Cyclops Murders killers. I think everytime the killer acts they get killed by another one who replaces them.
Renju is the first killer and he kills Shoko -> Iris becomes the next one and kills Renju -> So kills Iris -> If Boss is really a murderer like the locked green path suggests then she killed So and therefore she'll be the next victim. There is probably someone behind all this who is able to persuade people to kill.
The games mentions of parallel worlds. I figured it'd be a red hering due to it being too familiar to Zero Escape fans, but then towards the ending it is almost confirmed that the protagonist has memories of the other timelines, such as his stay in the hospital? I wonder if that was just supposed to be a zero escape nod, or if there's something up with that
That's kind of a common thread in almost all of Uchikoshi's games.
The concept of the protagonist being able to remember other timelines because they're interacting with the player, who can view the events taking place from a fourth dimensional perspective. Blick Winkel and all that. There's no real "in-game" explanation here, but we can assume it has something to either do with Date spending so much time in dreams or just simply being the character controlled by the player.
Finished Iris route. I feel like this is where the game begins?
the entire ending just fell flat to me. I didn't care much about Iris, so it just seemed weird that Date suddenly became super attached to her. I was more on board with Aiba's skepticism, though I'm not sure I trust Aiba either, since she uses Wadjet.
Though it's implied that Date is 89 and Iris' foster father somehow, so maybe the attachment makes sense.
It also looks like the psync machine prototype needed you to remove Iris' left eye for it to work? Bleh.
Oh, and the last action sequence was just as completely fucking stupid as the one before it. Screw this stupid porno/lingerie bullshit. And why is Mizuki some kind of super ninja with a lead pipe? This is so dumb.
So far this game feels like Danganronpa to me in that the story is good, but the gameplay is so bad that it actually gets in the way.
Just finished Iris's ending, which was my first route.
Well, I have a lot more questions than answers. So #89 is Hitomi's former lover, but Date also seemingly has some of his memories of the time spent with Iris? I still am unsure if Date actually changed the world in So's Somnium or if he was just imagining seeing Iris (although So's somnium really makes no sense either way right now). Okiura is super suspicious in terms of everything he did in this route, but at the same time I can't help but thinking there's something deeper going on there, and that his getting #89 out has more to do with Hitomi than some master plan. But I have no clue why he was trying to get Iris so bad, so who knows.
I'm interested to start going more down different routes and getting some answers. So far though, I really like the game. I'm loving the cast so far, especially Date, Iris and Moma.
Managed to hold out for the physical edition and finally picked up the game today. Watched all the A-Set Vlogs before playing and got about 1.5 hours in. I'm hooked. Game is super solid.
Well the only place that seems to have the standard switch physical edition online or nearby (that I would buy from) is Best Buy. Amazon, Target and Walmart all don't even have it listed. Probably just going to buy the physical from Best Buy (which is fine, just haven't bought anything full price since my GCU expired).
Edit: NVM Amazon has it but it wasn't showing up in my search, had to change the version from Limited.
I think i cracked the case, or at least one of them, we'll see if i'm right about this
About how iris and date seems to know each other, about the fact that they say your councioussness will stay in the brain if you stay after 6 minutes... We also see date in iris dreams as the killer... so my guess i date psynched with falco 6 years ago and their personality/memories merged... Or something close to that at least
I knew the 6 minutes thing would be relevent as soon as they introduced it, they wouldn't talk so much about it otherwise, and the whole 6 years ago memory loss was way too obvious, so it's not that hard to guess early on i would think... we'll see
I'm going to give a few spoiler-free steam-style reviews of my experiences so far:
"AI companion attempted to drift a forklift but drove it into the ocean, 10/10"
"As a 30something detective I got so engrossed spending time with 3 young girls at a maid cafe I forgot I was after a bloodthirsty killer 10/10"
"Shot an explosive bullet into a porn mag vending machine to distract the bad guys 10/10"
...But really this has been quite interesting so far, and I like the flow of a larger plot versus the more standard detective game fare of extremely separated incidents. VA work is absolutely fantastic, and the script localization is god-tier.
Framerate is uncapped, it can go above 30 -but never reaches 60- when not much is happening on screen but also go way below 30 during heavier scenes or when flashback windows start popping on screen.
Resolution wise i can't give you a precise number but i'm pretty sure it's not 1080p. It also has quite a bit of aliasing so IQ is not really the best, but it's less noticeable in undocked mode. I don't think it's terrible to be honest, but if you are planning on playing it on a bigger screen then one of the other versions is probably the better choice.
