A genuinely gripping story that gets hindered by how unconfined in itself it can be at times. Like how every single shooting section is structured around porn magazines or the fact that Aiba has to make just the quirkiest quips at the start of even the most important psyncs. And the worst part is theyre not even funny!!!!
This would have been a 4 star if Iris wasn't also one of the most nothing characters in media. She's not as cute or interesting as the writers seem to think she is and later reveals make her route (which i accidentally played first and gave me a bad first impression) super weird in retrospective.
The presentation of this game is great, the mystery is smart and well crafted and Date (aside from his awesome porn addiction) is a great protagonist. Absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes mystery/detective visual novels!!!

Pretty easily the least compelling entry Spike Chunsoft has in their catalogue of generally great mystery titles. After completing ToTK, I needed another game to fill the space between then and the release of SC’s newest mystery game, Rain Code. I had played this game previously but dropped it about halfway through, and replaying it I quickly realized why.

The story in this game can be compelling at times, but the characters are littered with overused tropes, even by Spike standards, and the main character’s constant horniness and general lack of personality made it so I didn’t really care for him as a protagonist. Almost all of the somnium segments of the game felt incredibly tedious and boring to me, with most of them either being extremely simple or having you result to trial and error to find the right path you’re supposed to take in order to get to the end in under 6 minutes. By the end I was so done with them I ended up using walkthroughs to find the right path through so I could continue with the story. I'm not even going to get into how unpolished the whole "erm you can somehow retain your memories from other timelines a little bit kinda because PARALLEL WORLDS EXIST!!! but that's literally all we're gonna say about that and hope that it flies" because DAMN.

There were definitely some positives though. The reveal of what the Psync machine was capable occurred genuinely fried my brain, and I had to pause the game for a solid 5 minutes as I ran through all of the possibilities this could have for the plot. However when it was revealed what this function was really used for, I felt slightly disappointed, as I believe this mystery could have used that twist to far greater proportions. The ending twist was fun, but I pretty much saw it coming. The first 10-15 hours of the game are really engaging, but by the end, the tedium really starts to kick in and the plot didn’t ramp up in the way I had envisioned which left me with a feeling of indifference toward the game.

After hearing that the sequel has been received even less positively than this game, I’m likely going to skip out on that one and just hope that Rain Code is able to give me that fulfilling feeling I was looking for.

Fun visual novel with an engaging story. When you first play it, it kinda feels like the routes diverge for no reason at all. Pieces don't fit together and you're often felt wondering if this game was well written at all. But once you hit the final route, the pieces start to fit together and you realized you've been played a fool this entire time.

Biggest flaws to this title are that while Date is probably the coolest incel protag, those pervy jokes do get tiring after a while. Also it's rather amusing that the game pushes Iris to be the deuteragonist while Mizuki is just flat-out more interesting. Lastly, the Somnium often feel contrived in their solutions. There's no satisfying aha moment in solving the puzzle. It's mostly just trial and error.

Amidst these flaws, the story is still great and is a highlight amongst the visual novels I have played for sure.

Without Uchikoshi I would never get to experience an anime girl with pink hair explaining Jung's theory of the collective unconscious.

Overall really enjoyed this game. A good story with good twists and didn't feel overly convoluted, and one of the best uses of a flow chart I've personally experienced. It actually felt significant to see these different possibilities play out, although as I always tend to feel with these types of games I did begin to grow tired of working my way through similar feeling content just to get to the end. Some of this is alleviated by a great cast who I was very invested in.

I have to ding the game in a few areas. Again, the flowchart means repeating some of the most annoying content (for me this is stuff like the action sequences - I can only sit through so much of the same joke). The somnium sequences were a bit hit or miss for me, and wow the performance issues on the Switch got quite frustrating. But it really speaks to the quality of the story that I eagerly powered through all of that to get the conclusion to the mystery.

Took me about a year to finish it after playing through the Danganronpa series. Some of the endings left a bitter taste in my mouth and I didn't think the game was gonna be nearly as interesting as it ended up being. The reason why I mentioned Danganronpa is because although both games aren't very similar, the part I like about both Somnium Files and the Danganronpa series is learning about what came before the beginning of the game, also both games would probably be liked by people with a perverted sense of humor I guess. If you dropped the game, I really suggest you pick it back up, the last two routes made it completely worth it for me.

I can totally see why some have dropped this game though, some of the dialogue can be pretty cringe or dreadful and one or two of the endings made me fluctuate my opinion about this game from good to worse. It's really up to the player and what they like out of these kinds of games to deem it's worth.