Damn, this opening song is great.

Ever17 was my 100th VN. I suppose it's only fitting to read one of my last remaining unread translated classics for a milestone like that, especially when it predates even Tsukihime's and Fate/stay night's English translations. I had to take breaks from suffering through Never7, so I decided to read a bit of this to get a headstart at the time.

Amidst the whole Infinity-Uchikoshi-Nakazawa-SciAdv situation you have works like:

• Remember11, a game that, in my opinion, is primarily focused on its sci-fi concept, as well as themes and symbolism, and sacrifices having character and surface-level story depth, to the point that you will almost certainly have trouble figuring out a chunk of it without that one blog

• Chaos;Head, a game with an unlikable protagonist, with a strong character and thematic focus, to the point of being unapologetic about its vision, regardless of the fact that a huge portion of the audience would obviously drop it because of the main character, Takumi

• Steins;Gate, a much more unambitious, safer bet following Chaos;Head with a lesser passion from the writer of being tired of time travel stories, but undeniably competently written

• Chaos;Child, which I see as being somewhere between the last two

And so on. So where does Ever17 lie?

A huge issue I had with Remember11, and especially Never7, as opposed to SciAdv which generally has a strong focus on characters, was that the two Infinities were almost hyperfocused on their sci-fi concept that they neglected their characters, making the surface-level plot and cast appear shallow and having like two scenes of actual characterisation outside of drama surrounding the premise (albeit for different reasons — Never7 makes you repeat the same thing around a dozen times while wasting time, and Remember11 is short and well-paced but doesn't have very compelling characters to me).

Going into Ever17, I did almost expect it to be "the Infinity/Sci-fi Mystery VN of all time", but I went in with an open mind. Luckily, I was mostly proven wrong, E17 is definitely my favorite Infinity. It barely even had the "I am sad, therefore I can shoot this sci-fi thing because of having a childhood trauma, or something" trope that these stories love to have.

While yes, E17 does have more of a mass appeal written into its DNA (written with being liked by as many various audiences as possible), as opposed to N7 and especially R11, so to speak, I think it has the most interesting premise and best cast of the three. It certainly has some issues, like how it could be cut by around 10 hours without any damages to the actual substance of the game, and we could have three routes instead of five, or how this among Takeshi Abo's weakest OSTs (though there are some bangers, like Karma or Zweitestock, of course), or how it gets cheesy at times, but overall it was certainly a fun experience. I can see why it was such a big deal. It certainly would have impressed me more earlier in my VN journey, but it still had plenty of surprises for me this late in the game.