Spoilers in the review because who even cares anymore
Steins;Gate is one of the most successful mess ever written. It is a confused, overlong slog devoid of characters, pacing and meaning. A walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It presents itself as a comedic, thriller-themed, sci-fi-ish slice of life piece about a group of wacky nerdy friends, as aware and believable in their roles as the big bang theory’s cast, which spends the first half of the game concluding nothing of relevance and the latter half of the game undoing the former. There is a significant attempt to deliver a message about the importance of free will in humanity, about our own limits, to face and accept the choices and consequences of our own free will and actions, establishing that we cannot have an ideal, easy, cotton-candy life because there is always a part of the world beyond our control, that we do have an impact on the world, and then the message is sent down the flush because we need an happy ending so here’s the resolution done off-screen for the main characters and believe in yourself, coincidence and improvisation will solve every conflict. Hours after reading through the misery of characters you are supposed to like, the game just gives you the comfortable solution that none of that matters, people will still be happy and you have to pretend those conflict never existed.
The protagonist, okabe, is a useless slab of wasted air, he fancies himself a science genius when he has no theoretical expertise aside from googling and reading stuff on Wikipedia and online boards, no technical skill, if it were not for the clear instructions others give him. Every major important concept in the story is introduced, theorized, discussed, solved and then engineered by someone else, he just uses them with barely knowing how any of those work. He also behaves like a daft twat for half of the game toward anyone, yet people still stick around him and act like he’s a dear friend despite being showered in his chauvinism, arrogance and terrible, terrible manners. When at the midpoint of the story he’s supposed to grow and start act like a caring individual, as said before he just undoes and forgets gradually every conflict his ‘friends’ have, and when he has to face the consequences of his actions, once again someone else hands him the deus ex machina, without him having to do any effort except crying and be sad about it for a bit. You aren’t even given the time to assimilate and feel the weight of the events, as you already expect a convenient solution to be on the way by that point.
The pacing is all over the place: many chapters that should be focused on progressing the story just digress and forget any sense of urgency despite time being the central idea of the story. A whole chapter is dedicated to having someone win a yu-gi-oh tournament, which isn’t even the main conflict of the arc’s protagonist, and then the real issue is presented and quickly dealt with in ten minutes before undoing it again and moving on to someone else’s life to ruin. This is gorilla-tier writing, how do you spend over half of your chapters’ length like this, with no editor to cut out the unnecessary bits, is beyond me.
The side cast is a mix of unfunny, clichéd anime tropes, with the major actors being a dumb happy-go-lucky girl whose major defining traits are being dumb and happy-go-lucky, a supposedly genius engineer and hacker constantly acting like a dangerous sexual molester, a psychotic super soldier so stupid she’d forget to eat or breath if you didn’t tell her to, another psychotic super soldier which should solve all the plot within minutes of playing start but there’s another idiot I guess, the genius tough but shy girl that should sound conflicted but actually has an emotional disorder and is just made fun of by everyone else, writer included. I didn’t even touch upon the token moe stereotype with no growth because, let’s face it, all the female characters can easily apply for the role.
The CGI and character design are hideous, poorly drawn, with terrible proportions and depth, weird colouring, unnatural and unhuman faces, body proportions and expressions (those eyes will hunt me in my sleep), that make the story seem like it takes place in alternate universe where everyone is the creature from the movie ‘the fly’. Credit where credit is due, the voice acting work and sound is pretty impressive, there are some really powerful tracks in the background music and most of the voice actors, from miyano mamoru to seki tomokazu, from tamura yukari to googling imai asami, each of them play their roles and the emotions they should convey very well.
That being said, even as a sound novel steins;gate is still overlong and riddled with dumb twists and nonsense to serve shock value rather than compelling, meaningful progression and satisfying conclusions based on its own terms, development and themes. If you want a visual novel dealing with sci-fi and thriller there’s plenty of dumb fun to be had with the nonary games, as bad as those can get, or just read chaos;child and experience the better sci;adv novel.
Steins;Gate is one of the most successful mess ever written. It is a confused, overlong slog devoid of characters, pacing and meaning. A walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It presents itself as a comedic, thriller-themed, sci-fi-ish slice of life piece about a group of wacky nerdy friends, as aware and believable in their roles as the big bang theory’s cast, which spends the first half of the game concluding nothing of relevance and the latter half of the game undoing the former. There is a significant attempt to deliver a message about the importance of free will in humanity, about our own limits, to face and accept the choices and consequences of our own free will and actions, establishing that we cannot have an ideal, easy, cotton-candy life because there is always a part of the world beyond our control, that we do have an impact on the world, and then the message is sent down the flush because we need an happy ending so here’s the resolution done off-screen for the main characters and believe in yourself, coincidence and improvisation will solve every conflict. Hours after reading through the misery of characters you are supposed to like, the game just gives you the comfortable solution that none of that matters, people will still be happy and you have to pretend those conflict never existed.
The protagonist, okabe, is a useless slab of wasted air, he fancies himself a science genius when he has no theoretical expertise aside from googling and reading stuff on Wikipedia and online boards, no technical skill, if it were not for the clear instructions others give him. Every major important concept in the story is introduced, theorized, discussed, solved and then engineered by someone else, he just uses them with barely knowing how any of those work. He also behaves like a daft twat for half of the game toward anyone, yet people still stick around him and act like he’s a dear friend despite being showered in his chauvinism, arrogance and terrible, terrible manners. When at the midpoint of the story he’s supposed to grow and start act like a caring individual, as said before he just undoes and forgets gradually every conflict his ‘friends’ have, and when he has to face the consequences of his actions, once again someone else hands him the deus ex machina, without him having to do any effort except crying and be sad about it for a bit. You aren’t even given the time to assimilate and feel the weight of the events, as you already expect a convenient solution to be on the way by that point.
The pacing is all over the place: many chapters that should be focused on progressing the story just digress and forget any sense of urgency despite time being the central idea of the story. A whole chapter is dedicated to having someone win a yu-gi-oh tournament, which isn’t even the main conflict of the arc’s protagonist, and then the real issue is presented and quickly dealt with in ten minutes before undoing it again and moving on to someone else’s life to ruin. This is gorilla-tier writing, how do you spend over half of your chapters’ length like this, with no editor to cut out the unnecessary bits, is beyond me.
The side cast is a mix of unfunny, clichéd anime tropes, with the major actors being a dumb happy-go-lucky girl whose major defining traits are being dumb and happy-go-lucky, a supposedly genius engineer and hacker constantly acting like a dangerous sexual molester, a psychotic super soldier so stupid she’d forget to eat or breath if you didn’t tell her to, another psychotic super soldier which should solve all the plot within minutes of playing start but there’s another idiot I guess, the genius tough but shy girl that should sound conflicted but actually has an emotional disorder and is just made fun of by everyone else, writer included. I didn’t even touch upon the token moe stereotype with no growth because, let’s face it, all the female characters can easily apply for the role.
The CGI and character design are hideous, poorly drawn, with terrible proportions and depth, weird colouring, unnatural and unhuman faces, body proportions and expressions (those eyes will hunt me in my sleep), that make the story seem like it takes place in alternate universe where everyone is the creature from the movie ‘the fly’. Credit where credit is due, the voice acting work and sound is pretty impressive, there are some really powerful tracks in the background music and most of the voice actors, from miyano mamoru to seki tomokazu, from tamura yukari to googling imai asami, each of them play their roles and the emotions they should convey very well.
That being said, even as a sound novel steins;gate is still overlong and riddled with dumb twists and nonsense to serve shock value rather than compelling, meaningful progression and satisfying conclusions based on its own terms, development and themes. If you want a visual novel dealing with sci-fi and thriller there’s plenty of dumb fun to be had with the nonary games, as bad as those can get, or just read chaos;child and experience the better sci;adv novel.