I came into this game with practically no knowledge, it looked vaguely similar to Danganronpa which I enjoyed so I just kind hopped in on a sale. What Buried Stars turned out to be was a Korean visual novel with some semblance of Danganronpa's mechanics, but it's own interesting story.
Basically, you play the role of one of the top contestants in a show sharing the same name as the game where the goal is to essentially raise the most hype and votes from fans. However, in an accident the show's stage collapses trapping the top 5 inside, and you are forced to uncover what happened and why while keeping your sanity through the whole situation. At first, I felt the game moved quite slowly, and I still maintain that it does take a while to pick up. This is exacerbated by the fact that your first playthrough will always end in a predetermined way. Thus, you have to play through up until that point again where you can take a different route to a more fulfilling ending.
That last point gets at my major complaint with this game, its quality of life. The game is structured to be played multiple times for different endings, but lacks the ability to: see what dialogue you have already encountered or is unchanged (let alone skip it), know where the story diverges into different routes, jump freely to different points in the story, etc. This makes for a lot of guesswork if you like to play games blind like I do. I ended up using a guide to figure out how to get the different routes, and I would recommend you do to if you plan to try the game.
That all said, Buried Stars actually had surprisingly good writing and convincing characters. Once I got a good chunk through, I started to notice the intricacies of each character and explore them by conversing on some of the optional topics. During that time, you can also check the in-game social media app to see if people are talking shit, worried, etc. which really adds to the atmosphere. I enjoyed how the plot unfolded as well, my only complaint is that there was not a very big difference between the way the two main routes of the game play out.
Buried Stars is worth a shot on a considerable discount, but as I said I strongly recommend using a guide due to the sometimes annoying play experience.
Basically, you play the role of one of the top contestants in a show sharing the same name as the game where the goal is to essentially raise the most hype and votes from fans. However, in an accident the show's stage collapses trapping the top 5 inside, and you are forced to uncover what happened and why while keeping your sanity through the whole situation. At first, I felt the game moved quite slowly, and I still maintain that it does take a while to pick up. This is exacerbated by the fact that your first playthrough will always end in a predetermined way. Thus, you have to play through up until that point again where you can take a different route to a more fulfilling ending.
That last point gets at my major complaint with this game, its quality of life. The game is structured to be played multiple times for different endings, but lacks the ability to: see what dialogue you have already encountered or is unchanged (let alone skip it), know where the story diverges into different routes, jump freely to different points in the story, etc. This makes for a lot of guesswork if you like to play games blind like I do. I ended up using a guide to figure out how to get the different routes, and I would recommend you do to if you plan to try the game.
That all said, Buried Stars actually had surprisingly good writing and convincing characters. Once I got a good chunk through, I started to notice the intricacies of each character and explore them by conversing on some of the optional topics. During that time, you can also check the in-game social media app to see if people are talking shit, worried, etc. which really adds to the atmosphere. I enjoyed how the plot unfolded as well, my only complaint is that there was not a very big difference between the way the two main routes of the game play out.
Buried Stars is worth a shot on a considerable discount, but as I said I strongly recommend using a guide due to the sometimes annoying play experience.