[Played via the Never7 -the end of infinity- Eternal Edition v0.6 fan translation]

I didn't have high expectations for this going in - Uchikoshi has some writing quirks that can bug me and this is one of his earliest works, not to mention the fact that I've heard nought but bad things from people whose taste I trust. Unfortunately, my expectations weren't betrayed. I don't really have complaints about the presentation - the art, while not for me, isn't bad, but that's about it. The problem lies in the story and characters.

By chance I recently watched Welcome to the N.H.K, which at one point has a character explain the philosophy behind bishoujo/gal games; as I played through Never 7, I couldn't help but notice that it conformed almost exactly to that formula. The threat or act of death for women serves almost solely as inspiration for the main character, a variant of the 'fridging' trope, and the female characters have very little depth. The treatment of female characters is misogynistic and, in one instance, borderline pedophilic. Also, the protagonist kicks a dog. The supernatural elements are the highlight here and my understanding is that the rest of the series going forward has less focus on romance and more on plot and science fiction themes.

I wouldn't have played this at all if it weren't the beginning of the Infinity series, and I certainly can't recommend it on its own. If and when I get around to other entries in the series, I'll come back and update this review to indicate whether the series is worth playing and if so, how important Never 7 is to it or whether it can be skipped.

Yeah so I saw many people being like "oh you like the Zero Escape saga? You should try these games too, they're from the same author!" And then you have a story about some guys conducting a psychology experiment to detect some god-complex schizophrenia syndrome that makes you inmortal, cures all illness or allows you to warp reallity and time travel (I wish this was satire).
The best part is that the game takes the form of a romantic visual novel, so you have to time travel your way into romancing 4 different girls before unlocking the true "curé" ending (in which they explain all of this, because anyone would think that the time travel shenanigans is an excuse to allow the MC to kiss random anime girls and not a plot-relevant thing, but yeah after like 20 hours the game actually turns into sci-fi).
At the very least, someone made a complete diagram to unlock all different endings that ressembles an eldritch entity not because they did a sloppy job, but because the game has so many random flags that it is chaotic to follow all of them.
I want to cut the man some slack because it's the first game of this saga and come on, this was made in 2000, the OST is glitched and I had to play this on 600x600 sure, but how on Earth did this guy write all the shit that happens in VLR but before that he made this monstruosity of a visual novel? Who knows, but the next games in the saga have much higher scores so I guess I'll eventually play them after I recover from this one.

Never 7 is the first entry of Infinity Series, but is it good?
Yes and no, while it's enjoyable as a SoL with likeable characters the Sci-Fi part is lackluster both as a standalone game and as part of the Infinity series.

Is it a must? No
It adds something to the infinity series? No
Is it worth playing? Yup why not, it's enjoyable in my opinion, just do not expect a well-written sci-fi Visual novel, take it as a SoL/Romance.

Vote: 7
Time in vacation: 11H 21M

This game is so much of a meme of a romantic visual novel in so many ways with at the best functional or decent ideas. Saki especially is a standout in how much irony in a VN you can reasonably experience. Of course this sounds like a recipe for a 2 or 3 out of 10 right? Wellllll a certain route exists and it completely breaks your mind to an impressive extent, even more so than better VNs with better mindfucks. I'm not saying it's bad though, it is in fact very good and fascinating but the fact that this game exists and you can have such an insane reading is both amazing but also not exactly conducive to a wholly good story. It's hard to describe anything else, I'd say read it but I am not even sure you should do that. I don't remember the routes well enough to rate all of them but Saki route is a 1 or 10 depending on if you are applying irony or not.

It is better than ZTD.

Never 7 is not a great game. The writing isn't particularly good and the characters often act needlessly difficult despite being older than the average VN cast. The Cure Syndrome stuff is fairly interesting but makes up a small portion of the overall story while lacking a lot of the build-up present in Uchikoshi's other works. Despite all that, between the early 2000s atmosphere, great soundtrack and small-scale setting, there's a certain charm to the game and the surprisingly short length keeps it from really being a waste of time. It's not really a VN I would recommend to anyone unless they were also a big Uchikoshi fan interested in seeing his roots but I don't regret reading it.