Yeah that’s what I’ve heard! The complexity is supposed to be comparable to Zero Escape, from the sound of it. I wasn’t super impressed with the stories of Odin Sphere or Muramasa, but it looks like Vanillaware took all of their resources from the gameplay side and poured them into the writing this time, so glad to hear it paid off! Definitely one for me to keep my eyes on!

Dude, I've heard 13 Sentinels has a super cool story, sounds like it's living up to that hype?

Yeah I actually enjoyed most of ZTD! I think I just knock it down some for the choppy animation, weak finale, and for Q’s team being kinda boring and underdeveloped. But I still had a good time with it overall I think!

I have my issues with VLR, namely regarding tone and ambition it couldn't quite achieve, but it was still solid, if not quite as good as 999 for me. I think almost everyone can agree that AI is a huge improvement on ZTD if nothing else...

Yeah, it was better than I expected! Certainly the best Uchikoshi game since 999, at least.

I mean, I still enjoyed them from what I recall, they just weren't as tightly written as earlier cases, and for the most part have no bearing on the overall plot. Still entertaining though!

It's been a while, but IIRC, Turnabout Trump is unfortunately probably the best case in Apollo Justice. Case 4 is pretty good, but 2 and 3 are pretty meh. Though I hope I'm wrong!

Oh yeah, totally forgot about Somnium Files actually! Hopefully it's a return to form for Uchikoshi, and it'll be neat to have him tackle a bit more conventional story than what he's used to, at least from the outset (I'm sure he'll throw some twists in here and there to keep things fresh).

Well actually, the few places that reviewed 428 actually scored it pretty well! So it seems like the majority of people thought it still stands up today. If anything, I was hoping for more VLR vibes, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers and we’re just lucky it came over at all.

Agreed, Canaan’s route didn’t really add much at all to the overall narrative - if anything it was just an obvious hook for the anime continuation, which I still have middling interest in anyway. Suzune’s route was alright, at least it was short.

I was a bit disappointed in 428 as a whole, actually. Though that might have been my own fault for setting my expectations so high over the past ten years. It was very unique and interesting, but I felt like the story would have been more impressive considering all of the acclaim it had received over the past decade.

Yeah, it’s kind of annoying to have to rush in VC4! I had a slow but steady strategy in the first battle of the last chapter, and it went off without a hitch and zero casualties in like 7 turns, but I only got a D rank. In the last battle of the chapter, I was getting wrecked by a boss tank, so I did a super risky strategy, had literally everyone except for my tank, an engineer and a scout survive in 3 turns, but pulled it off with an A rank. It’s dummmmb.

Thanks pal. (Hot damn, has it really been nine years?)

Boy did I love the Steins;Gate 0 anime. Not everyone is gonna be 100% happy with how it turned out, but there's no denying the original content was ace! Filled in everything that was missing IMO.

Good luck with Nocturne (you might need it with such tricky AI). Ikebukuro Tunnel is where I completely lost interest.

I mean, you can definitely still play it for the sake of completing the Infinity trilogy. That's the reason I didn't skip directly to Ever 17. Again, it has its merits, and if you're really into SoL stories, you will probably love it. I personally needed more substance and I'm very critical when it comes to sci-fi expositions and character depth.

Hey, sorry for the late response, I just came back from vacation.

To be honest, I really didn't like Never 7 that much. It has some ridiculously cheesy and cringe-worthy dialogue at times, especially in Haruka's route. The heavy SoL premise does not help matters. And the VN is a little too comfortable with certain character trope flanderization and becomes annoying after a while.

As for the sci-fi and emotional aspects, it does get interesting. The final route in particular is rather thought provoking, in the sense that you begin to question everything that has happened, so there's an existential component as well. Most of the sci-fi stuff has been seen in Uchi's later franchise, Zero Escape, but to Never 7's credit, it utilizes them in a unique way so you don't have to worry about it feeling the same.

Now, that being said, Never 7 requires huge leaps of logic and perhaps even worse, it relies too much on ambiguity. Essentially, without spoiling anything, there are various interpretations of the story, and whatever you think happened isn't necessarily incorrect. Much like ZTD, this is a case of the director being lazy and having the player write their story FOR them, only that the ambiguity is on a far larger scale in Never 7.

This has its moments, and it does have beautiful and well written scenes, mostly revolving around Izumi (BEST GIRL). Most of the VN is just underwhelmingly average for me.

Well there you go! I haven’t actually played any of the EO series, but I played a demo and it was nigh-identical, system-wise. Didn’t hate it, but too much dungeon crawling, not really my thing. It looks like Persona Q does something similar, between all the fanservice (and looks like you already own it anyway).

Don’t get me wrong, Strange Journey is still really good! I think it may have even been my first mainline SMT anyway. I just didn’t love the Etrian Odyssey-style dungeon crawling, and the battle system wasn’t my favorite either. And yeah, it can get pretty insanely difficult near the end, though I can’t say whether any of the additional content in Redux remedies that. It’s still solid either way though!

Yeah it kind of makes no sense lol - I honestly like the tone and probably the story as a whole more than the original so far, but some of the changes between branch points are a bit ridiculous.

How’s Strange Journey treating you? Probably my least favorite of the mainline SMT games I’ve played, but that’s partly because it seems so different, though that’s not an inherently bad thing.

Pretty much the same here - the concept of slice of life always sounds so boring, but there are a handful of cases where I end up actually enjoying them a fair amount! It helps that S;G has a great cast too, not to mention an always fun premise. Just hoping it can maintain that momentum as things get real!

Interesting that you liked Muv-Luv… from what I’ve read, a lot of people seem to despise the first part, or at the very least think it’s exceedingly bland, and only serves as a basis for which the rest of the series to stand on. I can’t speak for it myself, but I can only imagine how much you might enjoy the sequels, especially considering those same detractors commonly name Alternative as one of the best VNs ever.

I mean… while you could technically just watch/read about the alternate endings in NieR, it just feels more personal if you do things yourself, knowing what the second route reveals. To be fair, I did think Routes C and D were kind of a waste of time, since THOSE literally were Route B again with a slightly different ending. But Route B on its own was insane the first time through! Part of it was again me just liking the cast so much, I didn’t want it to end, haha.

BTW, don’t worry about missing anything in Automata - there’s a chapter/scene select option that opens up after finishing Route C or D for the first time, so you can finish up side quests and etc. Though you WILL want to make sure that Route E is the absolute last thing you do, for various reasons…

I’ve come to the realization that slice of life stuff seems to be my kinda thing when done properly - that’s part of the reason I’m sure that I enjoyed the first half of the S;G anime, whereas most people say it’s too slow. Comparatively, I felt the latter half was SUPER rushed just to give every girl (and Luka) their time in the spotlight, which I’m hoping the VN averts by having multiple routes and whatnot.

Duuude, come on! I mean it’s probably ruined now by all of your supplemental reading (and I will grant you that a lot of it is necessary), but skipping at least NieR’s Ending B is akin to not going through the true ending of a VN. There’s SO MANY extra scenes and new dialogue from a completely different perspective that completely changes everything. Like, I guarantee all of the average reviews at release did the same, because I was in the “good, not great” camp too until my second playthrough. No helping it now I suppose, but PLEASE don’t do the same with Automata - it does the “multiple playthrough” thing much better, and you will literally miss over half the game by stopping at Ending A this time.

Yeah, despite how well the anime adapted the overall story from what it seems, there definitely seems to have been some, for lack of a better term, divergence in regards to how Kurisu’s character was portrayed. Like, the show got the point across, but there’s much more under the surface when she gets more room to breathe, and like you noted, has the opportunity to interact more with the rest of the cast. Also, maybe I was just dumb while watching the anime, but all of the Suzuha foreshadowing is heavy handed af.

Hey, you “finished” NieR! Now play it again, haha. Trust me, you haven’t seen anything yet.