cw: mentions of ableism, transphobia(?), and rape

Reeling from his recent break-up, Haruaki Fusaishi stumbles into the remote village of Yasumizu. Before long, an ominous fog descends on the mountain, trapping Haruaki and the residents within the town. The residents begin holding a ritual known as the "Feast." Its essentially a game of Werewolf. One of your friends and neighbors has been replaced with a murderous "wolf." You have to vote to hang the wolves before the wolves kill you. On top of that, Haruaki finds himself time looping and repeating the feasts over and over. In a community that already distrusts outsiders, can he find a path to escape?

Hard to get a read on my feelings on this. I think there's compelling stuff here. Major themes of how societies and religions form. How isolation or ostracization shape how people view themselves or others. How anyone, no matter how strong a will, can justify a cult mentality or mob violence.

I found myself getting pretty attached to some of the characters. The post-game revelation mode lets you hear the internal monologues of characters you had trouble reading for most of the game. When the main game is a paranoia run of who you can trust or fear, its a great way to add layers to the experience. You can understand the pain the characters are going through when they have to fear their loved ones or how someone is slowly convinced to become a wolf. Some of the stand-outs is Haruaki himself. Starting off as a generic mc man, he quickly reveals himself to be one of the Most Characters I've ever seen. He's a prankster and a liar, and for a game of paranoia and manipulation it makes him the kind of rogue-ish hero that a narrative like this needs. It also shows how he's not above the village's legends. He's a skeptic by nature, but in the route where he's forced to become a wolf, his desperation to survive sinks him to the same depravity he tried to stay above.

At the same time, there's elements of the character work that feels... weird? Yasumizu is established as a town of people who were exiled from the more affluent nearby town. There's a fascinating class and prejudice angle that the story digs into multiple times.

But then you get characters like Mocchi. Mocchi was exiled because he's an eccentric and his family thought he inherited some family instability. It makes sense that Yasumizu wouldn't exact have a robust mental health system to support Mocchi and provide the language or aid he needs for himself. But one of the ways they show that Mocchi is "weird" is that he wears dresses. Haruaki goes out of his way to ask "are you uncomfortable with your gender identity?" and Mocchi literally responds, I quote, "No I'm just weird." No one ever judges Mocchi for this and its never brought up again but it makes the intentions of that writing decision even harder to pin down. I don't THINK its transphobic but the fact that I can't even tell is some kind of damning.

The final villain runs into a similar problem. Without getting into details, its revealed that the villain needed to sleep with almost the entire cast for their plan to succeed. This includes minors. Whether or not sex was actually involved or not, that's just a bizarre writing decision to make? At the same time, the villain tragic past involves some weird sexual aspects that are also horrifying to untangle? It just seems like a decision that didn't need to be a part of the story and was thrown in as a last minute gross out factor.

Its a weird game to decipher. I think it has genuinely great themes about social conflict, but some of its decisions are so baffling that it completely takes you out and makes you question how intentional those themes are.

Bizarre little game.

im so sad bc a friend recommended me this and it started off so good but alas...
to start with:

pros
+ art style that fits a lot with the theme, its not particularly "pretty" to look at but it does the job
+ character designs both fit the time period (early 2000s) AND the setting (u'll understand when u see it)
+ if you ignore the stuff ill talk in the spoilers section the first 10-15 hours and some additional info you get at the end are just. really good writing
+ worldbuilding that makes sense and makes you go "OHH.. THAT'S WHAT IT WAS" in a good way
+ lots of anti-frustration mechanics such as the game telling you where you fucked up and what you should have done, and which keys are for which choices
+ rly good ost!!!
+ i just like mafia/werewolf
? there's no real gore, everything is drawn with a red silhouette instead.

general thoughts are:
SPOILER TERRITORY!!!




HOOOAHHH!!










complaints about haruaki and rikako:
i think the first loop where you dont participate in the feast and the second loop where you DO participate and play as the snake are flawlessly written, aside from chiemi's behavior in wit (which is explained later) is written in a really cringeworthy way, i think that just fits her personality. characters react differently to familiar people and events depending on their role during the feast which keeps the story fresh during each loop and you learn more about them. my problem with the wolf route which also has characters behaving differently than usual is mostly with haruaki's behavior with haru. chiemi and rikako are his love interests during the first loops which i have no problem with, but haruaki is (self reclaimed) 24 years old and haru is a 15 year old. haruaki is just really creepy about her, saying that she is "becoming his type" and that he has "fallen for her" and "would like a relationship with her had she not been a wolf". although haruaki himself is an unreliable narrator, lying about pretty much everything ever, no one in the game questions the age gap when haruaki says he had fallen for her (although this can be explained with the fact that yasumizu is a hypertraditionalist religious village, and as i am currently living in a country filled with and basically ruled by these villages i can see that being ok with them, however the journalists are educated people from the city, they should never be okay with a 24 yr old saying he has fallen for a 15 yr old.

i also hate that rikako is also a pedophile and a rapist, at least she gets called out, not because shes a rapist or a pedophile but because she is trying to resurrect an ancient evil god and destroy japan. i mean ok priorities. i know japan isnt the best with these topics (rape and pedophilia) so thats all i will say.

i didnt like the ending. i hate the whole "dreamer" thing, i hate that fucking sheep so much just ruining the immersion completely and destroying the setting the game had established, and i hate the game trying to justify EVERYTHING about yasumizu with "facts and logic", such as miguruma and higuchi controlling yasumizu and making them think ookami-sama DOES exist, and while learning about these with nosato was fun and made me go "ohhhhhhh", i just hate that how haruaki had an answer for everything. the corruption? its miguruma destroying the bodies with machines. the marks? they put sleeping gas in their room. the locks opening themselves? miguruma must have put motion activated locks on the doors. just bulldoze the whole village at this point whats the fucking point the cops wont come anyway

anyway it was ok the ost was really good. as for who i think is autistic (because i have to pick an autist from everything i play) i think its both kiyo and mocchi, i think autism just runs in the nosato family. also i love haru / the badger god combo theyre so fucking funny

never before in my life was i presented with a cast as dislikable as this, but you keep at it, you think it will improve, and then when the story finally gets to rolling they hit you with another shitty joke, and another, and OH we were being serious? nah, HERE'S YET A N O T H E R. and then the endgame is building up to be this GIANT THING, and you think, YES FINALLY, HERE IT COMES - BUT THEN THEY INFODUMP FOR 5 HOURS STRAIGHT AND THEN YOU SEE THE CREDITS ROLL BUT THEY KEEP INFODUMPING, AND THEN YOU GO READ THE EXTRA SCENES BECAUSE IT'S A VISUAL NOVEL AND YOU WANT ALL THE CONTENT BECAUSE IT WAS OKAY-ISH OVERALL AND IT'S JUST MORE INFODUMPING ON SIDECHARACTERS IN A SETTING YOU WILL /NEVER/ REVISIT AGAIN BECAUSE IT JUST DOESN'T STOP.

what initially drew me to this game was the artstyle, and the story held great promise. in the end i feel like i could have spent those 50+ hours with like 3 other games, because after it was all said and done i was just so tired. so so tired of the writing in this. it could have been great, it had its great moments, but the overall package was such a letdown, i felt myself legitimately get angry for even spending yet another minute suffering through it.

The game has plenty of good points in its favor. The core premise of a Werewolf-style mystery game is good and the setting and characters both contribute to it. I generally enjoyed the first two thirds or so and was interested to see how it would all be tied together.

But there are two main issues that really bring the game down for me.

First is that the game's central premise never felt fleshed out enough in terms of actual gameplay and writing. You are stuck in a time loop, keeping your memories each time you experience the game. Yet, apart from a handful of choices scattered about, nothing ever actually changes to reflect the knowledge you've acquired. Start a loop from the beginning knowing exactly who the werewolves are? Well your thoughts never actually change to reflect that. You are just as clueless and helpless as the first time unless you are reacting to a very specific choice. Ultimately, I can at least understand this flaw but it does still bring the game down. One of the interesting aspects of a game like Werewolf is just all the different ways things can go depending on how people act. Different choices for the wolves' target and investigations and accusations can all go a lot of different ways normally. But in Raging Loop, the choices are limited (and almost always just lead to an immediate bad end if you choose incorrectly) so the game actually ends up being completely linear with few deviations.

Maybe that's just an issue with expectations, but given the inspiration they're working with and the opportunities it presents, Raging Loop takes what makes the original Werewolf such an interesting experience and diminishes it into a structure for telling a very linear and unchanging experience. I can understand why they did this, but it does leave a poor taste in my mouth.

Second, and the issue most other reviews point to, is that the ending is atrocious. I honestly don't even know how to express the sheer nosedive the story takes once you approach the ending, but rest assured that I am not exaggerating when I say it is one of the stupidest and most out-there resolutions I have ever seen to a mystery. Ever seen the resolution to a Professor Layton game? Well think of something along similar levels of bullshit to that.

So good fundamentals, but brought down by some structural issues that underdeliver on the game's potential and an atrocious resolution. The early stuff can still be interesting to play and I enjoyed my time with it enough that I don't feel cheated of my time and money, but its hard to recommend the game given its pretty significant flaws.

Maybe play it if this seems like something up your alley. There is still good content to be found, just know ahead of time that the buildup is a much greater experience than the payoff. And don't touch any of the postgame content. Its not worth your time and retroactively makes the ending even worse.

I was quite surprised by how fun this VN was, despite being a bit disappointed by how static it was. Having just played Gnosia, I read the setup of Raging Loop and expected something similar but RL is firmly within a classic VN structure. With that expectation, however, it excels as one.

The highlight here, and what you would hope for a hidden role type setup, is the characters. I don't think there's one poorly written character in the bunch and even the ones you might not like at least add to the narrative, engaging in the proceedings in a way that feels reasonable and yet dramatic. The main character being my favorite as his quips are roguishly entertaining and he's sometimes even more mysterious than the people he finds himself involved with. They don't keep his motivations locked away, though, so you still can more or less understand why he's acting the way he does.

The pacing of the plot is overall pretty snappy as well. It drags for me a little bit once it explains the rules of the "game" (likely because of my recent plays, again) but there's enough important differences here that you'll still want to pay attention to it all. As a mystery story there's a lot of subtlety in the moment to moment proceedings and I think they strike a good balance of "keeping things happening" and "explaining why it happened."

If there's anything I was disappointed by in the story, though, it was the ending. It was well executed and interesting, but not as surprising or revelatory as it might be for most readers. If you've read Higurashi and seen Owarimonogatari, you'll probably see what I mean when you play. And I still suggest you do, because the journey is still quite enjoyable off the writing alone.

As for the bells and whistles, this a pretty full featured VN experience and the navigation options are more than sufficient for the kind of branching it uses. Good enough even that I wished they had actually made the route traversal a little more complex near the end to push the mystery element a bit more.

In any case, while not the most mind blowing story out there, it really is a solid one. Do recommend.

I never expected Kemco of all companies to put out a game so fantastic, since the most I’ve heard about the companies was that they shoveled out sprite JRPGs that many considered “kusoge”. My expectations were a little low even after hearing some good things about this title, so I was completely blown away by the level of ambition and the incredible atmosphere of tension sustained by strong horror writing and a very fitting art style. I was gripped quickly and finished this in a matter of days because the suspense was unbearable, I simply needed to know how the next conference was going to go.

Structurally, it’s the antithesis to Gnosia, another popular game based on Werewolf mechanics. While Gnosia featured randomly generated Werewolf scenarios that relied on passing stat checks and could be cleared in a matter of minutes, Raging Loop features three pre-defined scenarios, traditional VN choices and are a lot meatier in content. I much prefer this approach, as Gnosia can start to feel lifeless after you learn how to game the algorithm and you see all the repeated dialogue. Here, each scenario is incredibly well-crafted with much attention paid to how the characters respond differently when they’re assigned different roles and how their existing relationships affect their suspicions of each other.

I really do want to emphasize just how great the characters are. A lot of the cast can seem pretty unlikable at first glance, especially during the first loop where several people are very untrusting of protagonist Haruaki, but they’re all incredibly dynamic as different sides come out during the loops and they all reveal themselves to be pretty compelling people. I personally liked Chikamochi, a weird kid who at times I really enjoyed and other times I was incredibly annoyed by but still felt a lot of affection for him, and Haru, who I initially wrote off as a bratty teenage girl until later on when I found an incredibly relatable side to her. The true ending works for me because of how much of it is built off of the attachments the player forms towards these characters, and it carries the ending despite a couple of twists being just a tad deflating.

Also, this VN surprisingly has a lot of replay value! Replaying the game after seeing the true ending lets you view several new scenes where Haruaki wasn’t present, get extra commentary on bad endings, and even adds a couple of additional endings. None of it is really necessary but it’s all good stuff and it gave me the chance to spend a few more hours with this incredible cast. The amount of effort put into it is very appreciable, especially since this game is pretty lengthy even without any of this content.

Fuck me for playing this one, I guess. The bulk of the game is better than my two star rating would imply, but the combination of a momentum halting, seemingly endless exposition dump at the climax of the story combined with sudden-onset-stupid-Japanese-wordplay made this one a chore to finish. I was just happy by the time it was finally over.

There's various plot twists, all of them dumb, but if taken at face value and contained to just the first three routes, Raging Loop is not the worst game in the world.

Put that on the box, please.

Raging Loop has been on my radar for a long time but always got pushed back for one reason or another. Following a bad storm and a long power outage with nothing to do, I saw a good opportunity and went ahead and jumped on it. A very comfortable ~25 hour experience split into a few nice binging sessions. Anything “999-coded” (murder mystery with a flowchart and remembering things that you shouldn’t be able to remember!!!) is always going to speak to me on a deeply personal level because it is simply the greatest of all time every time it’s implemented, but in all honesty I really wasn’t feeling Raging Loop during its first route. I was considering dropping the game after the conclusion of the first route, in fact, but I’m glad I persevered because the middle stretch of the game was much more consistently engaging and well-paced.

Raging Loop is interesting because I think it really shines in this middle section, where the player is just familiar enough with the setting, its cast, and the “ruleset” of the game to feel like an active participant in the deduction-making while still leaving plenty of room for the inevitable “you haven’t seen anything yet” reveals. The ending suffers from some pacing issues and lack of satisfying buildup and closure for certain characters/plot points but there are some undeniably great scenes so it isn’t anything too egregious. I was especially impressed with how much I came around on the main character who went from actively taking away my enjoyment in the first route to a surprisingly endearing lead in the game’s final hours. At no point did I ever really care about the “romance” aspect the game seemed so hell-bent on trying to spoon-feed to me. I was definitely not buying what Raging Loop was selling on that front, sadly.

It’s not perfect but it was a very fun read, I’m glad I finally got around to it.

The story gets really convoluted and hard to follow at times but I still think the overall writing can be pretty compelling in this game. Top heavy character cast (Chiemi especially is great) but not too bad otherwise. A werewolf/mafia VN where your choices matter is just kind of a brilliant concept so that lead to a lot of fun and interesting scenarios. Unfortunately I think that's far and away the best part of the game and that the attempts at deeper lore with giant info dumps just hurt the experience more than anything.

Minor-medium spoilers ahead.

The game kind of goes back and forth between ridiculously supernatural and this idea of "Wait but nothing is supernatural after all!!!" which leads to some contradictory situations. I would've rather they took it easy a bit on the attempts at 300 IQ genius writing and focused more on what the game did well: the elements surrounding the feast, and Haruaki's relationship dynamic with the different characters. The first loop was by far my favorite part of the game, which means to me the game went downhill after that, although I thought the other 2 main loops were also interesting in their own right. I frankly don't think the game concluded well (although the last scene with Chiemi was admittedly cute and satisfying) but I can say that I generally enjoyed the ride along the way.

Visual novels are known for their big dumb endings, I don't know if I've seen one nosedive as hard as this one does though. Everything before that is fine, if a little mid. Like others have said, the protagonist is pretty interesting and probably the only real reason to recommend this.

If you haven't already read the Spike Chunsoft VNs there isn't a reason to recommend Raging Loop over those. If you have read them, you won't get much more out of this unless you REALLY like werewolf for some reason.