feel like i came out of a fugue state where i came out of this and somehow thought "huh, pretty good". i don't want to think too hard about how i came to that conclusion, so i will just continue to have it!!

and its probably better than zero escape bc its an adventure game thats dumb in different and (mostly) good ways instead of being dumb in...yknow, the zero escape way. ai even makes fun of it for that in the iris route and its so fucking funny to think about that i will give uchikoshi SOME credit, just this once.

Uchikoshi the GOAT (3)

Strong contender for my fave VN of all time alongside VLR.

It legitimately has one of the best stories I've ever witnessed in the entire medium of gaming with some of the craziest and most complex writing, but cohesive and coherent at the same time and the plot twists never feel cheap or ass-pulled, not surprising though considering it's written by the genius mind behind the Zero Escape trilogy.

The game has about 30 hours of content with some very unique and creative puzzles, an amazing OST and incredible dual audio with one of the best English dubs I've heard with some phenomenal work by Erika Harlacher, Greg Chun and DC Douglas especially.

Seriously I can't praise this one enough give it a shot if you like sci-fi murder mystery stories.

Really wanted to like this one because a lot of friends praise it to no end but I just couldn't.

This game is a complete mess. Right off the bat the main character is unlikable and every times he speaks I feel like closing the game. The characters in general are not very interesting and I only find myself caring for 2 of them. For some reason the game feels compelled to throw an unfunny horny joke in every scene, and even in action scenes too which is very irritating due to the frequency of them.

The gameplay is just trial and error but in an unfun way that, unless you do some weird leaps of logic, you will probably not complete the somnium in your first few tries and will most likely have to resort to a guide to complete them.

Can't really speak for the story since I didn't finish the game (and I don't really plan to), but from the 2 and a half routes I played I found myself scrolling through Twitter more than looking at what happened on screen.

Incredibly happy with this one. An expertly written detective story about brain-jumpin' and shit. I've never felt as much anxiety as I have playing this game, and that is entirely because of how well it is designed and how well it intersects the gameplay and the narrative. The story is unpredictable, with me thinking I had it so many times, but never quite having it down - the story changes and twists so dramatically that I was always questioning what I knew, and when it all came together, I was sat there seeing it all make perfect sense. But I was still shocked! Every character is great, and the game really loves to get into this grounded noir aesthetic, especially early on, that makes the game just a blast to play. My biggest problem with the game is unfortunately when it just teeters on the edge of being too anime for it's own good - idols, excessive jokes about porno mags and really fucking strong 12 year old girls are everywhere! It's a minor complaint, but I like the more grounded noir stuff more. My favorite route was Ota's, had me crying in the fucking club! Add a fantastic soundtrack on top, and you've got an instant classic. Give this one a go whenever it's on sale.

Like a lot of other Spike Chunsoft projects as of late I think it falls a bit too deep into basically just being torture porn. (for one of the endings, the warehouse scene REALLY did not need to be shown they couldve cut away) but I think the sense of humor is marginally better than other SC games, still a lot of horniness in a game involving a lot of teenagers but it seems in better taste than something like danganronpa (not to mention the trans rep reaallly makes me roll my eyes). however I think these downsides are more than made up for by the characters. I love all of them, even ones that I would probably find really annoying in every other context. Also, the ending was legitimately cool, it did not feel dumb like most other SC endings have been. Worth playing if my description made you interested