Honestly while I love this game a lot I do feel like several of the routes feel like wasted potential (Nanami and Yua's specifically)

I'm glad they most likely noticed this and had less but more fleshed out routes in Chaos;Child however

Rimi, Kozue and Sena's routes as well as the common route and true ending were amazing though so a couple of mid routes don't really drag it down at least

Takumi understander (I wish I could give this game a little bit of a higher score but some of the character routes pacing.....ABYSMAL) tho it made me love Chaos;Child even more than I already did through the introduction of more background which is 10000% a plus and as a standalone story it's brilliance. At the time I don't imagine much of any VNs were doing what it accomplishes with its ever present & heavy atmospheric tones of sheer vulgarity and dull isolationism.

At first I was honestly disappointed that Desire Blue Sky never plays in this game due to my hype throughout the years I stalled this game coming across it but it didn't even matter in the end, A Will absolutely bangs. Speaking of which, too bad a 'certain company' has yet to patch out the glitch that interrupts the ending scene from, ya know... actually playing!

I played the original version a couple years back and I enjoyed it despite some pretty big faults in my eyes, so I was curious how this enhanced version would hold up since I had played a large chunk of the content already. Ultimately my stance was pretty solidified without much change, this game has some really awesome plot writing (it would be spoilers to get into it too much) but is hampered by a pretty bland supporting cast and a truly obnoxious main character that takes way too long to become even partially tolerable. The Noah additions to the game are a highlight though, it makes the side characters a bit more fleshed out and interesting for the most part which is appreciated. Ultimately the super dark murder mystery and crazy sci fi elements make this a good story overall but the character shortcomings keep it firmly in last place in the franchise for me (DaSH didn’t happen).

Whose eyes are those eyes?

As my first foray into the Sci;Adv series, this VN was a really great ride. CHN is probably one of the most gory, and dark games I've ever played, with the psychological horror atmosphere giving me goosebumps at times. Like I genuinely had to step away from the screen a few times during the common route and Route B because the descriptions of the things that happened in certain scenes was very disturbing lol.

It's best aspect is easily the psychological horror atmosphere it managed to create, with it getting accompanied by a thrilling storyline about a string of serial killings with it's mystery getting piled onto the protagonist, a shut-in Japenese High School student who would rather the world just leave him alone and allow him to play games all day. Unbeknownst to him, he has a great power hidden within himself that's just waiting to be unlocked, and there are several factions throughout the story that are conspiring for this power.

Takumi's relationship with the other characters is very interesting, he's consistently viewed as a weak, and pathetic person due to his withdrawn nature. Despite Takumi's insistence on not caring about any 3D girls and only preferring the 2D world, he does have a side to him that shows he does care about people he gets close with, in spite of his cynical nature.

As for some things I didn't like about the game, I think the only major thing I disliked was the true ending feeling a little rushed, but it does explain a lot of unanswered questions surrounding several characters and storylines.

The other minor criticisms I have are how some of the other routes are a bit tedious to unlock, being how you have to skip through a ton of scenes you've already seen just to get to where you want.

Aside from those though, this was a great game. And I can't wait to get into Steins Gate soon.

This is definitely one of the most convoluted and longest visual novels I’ve ever played, but I mostly enjoyed it. I remember when I finished the original version that my main complaint was the lack of interactivity, there was hardly anything to do but read (yes, yes, I know that this is to be expected from this genre, but still, you know what I mean, there are VNs out there with much more stuff to do in them). Not surprisingly, this is still the case here, however, we get many more endings, and reaching all of them requires a bit more work and thinking, which was a nice surprise for me, something I found a welcome addition – not to mention the graphical enhancements and all the new songs.

As for the story, the main part of every VN, well… it’s not light reading material, that’s for sure. As I already mentioned, it’s quite lengthy and crazy complex, full of many scientific and technical terms – I have to admit, I still don’t understand it completely. Nevertheless, the characters are interesting (except for the extremely irritating protagonist, I know I was supposed to sympathize with him, but I simply couldn’t…), the soundtrack is solid, there’s a little bit of humour, mystery, romance, thriller, horror… and quite a lot of gore and physical/mental torture, so keep that in mind. Recommended only for mature audiences!

I really enjoyed Steins;Gate, and I’m interested in the whole Science Adventure series in general, so I don’t regret buying this one, either – especially after all that chaos (pun not intended…) surrounding the Steam release. The publisher deserves every support for standing their ground, if you ask me. Anyway, give this one a try, even if you played the original version, you’ll find more than enough new content in it.

An unbearable work of fiction that perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with anime, an embarrassment of the medium that frankly makes other art (especially Steins;Gate) feel worse after engaging with this. It has glimpses of being something, of doing anything well, but it's ultimately horny edgelord chuunibyou garbage through and through that fails to comment on anything but it's own state of mind. Disgustingly imbibed with misogyny and male entitlement, Takumi is an unbearable head to exist in that gets no better through his suffrage and mandatory anime power-up. For your female cast, you have all your favourite cookie-cutter archetypes with nothing beneath the hood: Kuudere, Tsundere Daddy Issues, Moe, Undying Loyalty and Sister Complex. There is one female character I took any interest in and she gets the least screentime and is written like average cartoon genius. Each one is subservient, undeveloped or perverted. I don't care if Takumi is meant to be a piece of shit, that's not my point. The issue is it's not executed in a way that is at all meaningfully critical of such an existence, drowning him in so much Christopher Nolan type BS to make his development intangible instead of at all confronting him and those who might identify with him. Takumi wins, he lives against all odds, he gets the girl. Even if he suffers for it, his delusions are rewarded and he makes no meaningful change by the end because the improvements he make aren't even in reality. The most honourable thing he does is suppress delusions rather than ever go beyond them. Perhaps it's just because I pulled the plug before the epilogue route, who knows. The entire narrative is swamped and absolutely disjointed by amateurish writing established on pseudo-science and pretentious anti-intellectualism. It gets better in the last 3 chapters, but ultimately ends on a cliche wet fart that felt like a otaku high schooler tried to rewrite the last two episodes of Evangelion without understanding half of the symbols. It sucks because there are glimpses of something, glimpses that gets realized in the rest of SciAdv. The NewGen killings are compelling and the boldness to take on a depraved protagonist has so much narrative potential, but it lacks the tact or the maturity to do any of it with grace. This is without me choosing to opt into any of the disgusting delusions the game serves to keep it's horny audience satiated. The first route was a profound waste of twenty hours of my time and I frankly don't want to stomach the six romance routes to get whatever true ending the pathetic writing and clearly fractured team of authors can muster. I really hope Chaos;Child pays off at all, makes serious positive reform for what was attempted here, because what is here is frankly an insulting and disparaging use of time.

It's definitely clear that this title is a predecessor of Steins;Gate both in terms of shared presentational qualities and also in that it feels rougher and less matured. I'm coming from the perspective of someone whose start into the Science Adventure series was S;G and also I played on the Switch.

I'll start with the strong points: this Switch release has the level of presentation quality I remember from S;G on the PC. The menus work well; the core reading features you'd expect from a VN are present and polished; the tips menu is just as useful and sometimes entertaining (though I've noticed that my need to use it is down dramatically since I played S;G all those years ago). The art style is a little more typical than S;G's, but there's a similar level of effort put into the CGs and animations, some of which are quite pretty and smooth despite their technical simplicity.

Aside from one glitch that keeps the credit sequence from being able to start in the "True End" it was a fairly polished release. Assuming they get that fixed in a timely manner (it released fairly recently as of this writing), that won't be a big issue anyway. Still feels a bit bad to have that little trip-up right at the end though for those of us who did get it early.

When it comes to the actual story itself, I'm a bit more mixed. The overall concept is quite fun: a magic highschooler harem romp, except the protagonist actually has debillitating social anxiety and everyone else is equally screwed up, twisting events into a psychological thriller. A bit more novel back in 2008, but I would say is probably one of the better examples of the concept...

With that said, the main protagonist drove me nuts at a personal level. If it didn't stick to his perspective as much as it does, that might not have been a problem, as his decisions usually make sense in the context of the story trying to be told, but my lord I wanna slap the guy. So that kinda sours my experience with it. More objectively it can also tend to indulge in its chuunibyou elements a bit too hard, to the point where I'm pretty sure now that half of Okabe's chuuni talk in S;G was a self-critical jab at this story.

Structurally, its mixed as well. On one front, most the time the "Delusion" mechanic presented is really neat and adds a cool way to flavor scenes according to player decisions without having to hard branch and necessitate a bunch of replays.... but then they did include real branches for each of the heroines that are triggered near the start of story after the first completion and require you to fast forward through 6 or 7 chapters of 95% identical content again before you actually get to the new ending. Thankfully there is the smart "skip" to speed that up but it's still just a fast-forward and takes like 30-50min to get through all the stuff you've already seen.

In any case, I am overall positive on the experience but a bit exasperated. If the themes and previews tickle your fancy or are just curious about the earlier games in the series, give it a shot. Just don't expect a masterpiece like S;G.

Got the first ending, and now i can say that this game represents the early 2000's anime and gaming aura more than anything that people try to recreate via memes and aesthetic videos nowadays
It's unsettling to say the least, this weird and raw aura of an really unpolished rough in the edges game with it's 3D assets, and claustrophobic ambient of Taku's base, those are something really disturbing to me and not many VNs have caused genuine agony on me as this one does.
I can't really put it into words but i hope you guys get what i'm trying to say, maybe it's a reeally subjective stuff, but still, i'm curious if i'm the only one who feels like that
that aside i must say the i'm disapointed, this game had some potential, Taku's character is really weird and reminds me of shinji. He has to do a lot of important and dangerous stuff, he's basically obliged to save the world even if he just wants just to live a normal life (as far as normal can go to a shut-in otaku.). Still, by the end he turns into someone who really wants to save everything for Rimi, and that could've been handled better... (SPOILER ALERT) He gets super poweful and starts saying some really cringy lines like "delusion is something that virgins can do the best!" and then the villain dies in epic style. Like, seriously. W H Y? Then he gets revived with the power of his friends and... shit i can't take it anymore, that ending was really obnoxious imo.

i'll play the rest of the routes to see if any of the is better, but my hopes aren't really high

I played the original many years back as a teenager, it was cool, quite scary for a kid. Nowadays as a full fledged NEET, the game just hits different, relating to the paranoid Nishijou Takumi is not cool by all means, but his messed up head and personality make the whole experience so much better. Mastering the game was awesome as well ESPECIALLY for the True Ending of the Game, it gave me the chills "Sakihata Rimi Inoru". Long story short, the game is a very close experience to putting your feet in the ocean of insanity and paranoia.