It feels weird to have finally played NoAH after all these years. This game has a really cool, paranoid atmosphere and style I like a lot. I'm not going to say it has the most well-written story in the world, but for me at least, it was engaging, even if this was my second playthrough after playing the original game years ago. The NoAH additions, such as the character routes, really help the game feel like the fully realised experience it was meant to be originally. I can't say I thought they were all bangers, but the depth they add, along with what they add to the gameplay experience overall, helps give a sense of thematic finality, if that makes sense. Chaos;Head is a great start to the Science Adventure series, but still sadly sits in the huge shadow of Steins;Gate. At least give this one a shot, even if you're just itching to skip to Steins;Gate.

And play the Committee of Zero patch, of course.

Chaos;Head is a very aptly named game because the entire game you are inside the mind of this creature known as Takumi Nishijou. "Incel" these days is more of a watered-down term but if you were to go back to it' original definition and the type of people the word described, Takumi might be the biggest example of this concept ever. At first glance it might seem like Takumi is just an otaku archetype but over the course of the game you begin to realize just how selfish and pathetic he actually is. One of the main features of the game is the "delusion" system where Takumi will be presented with a situation and the player is given the choice to have a positive or negative delusion or stay in reality. There's more to it than this but many positive delusions are usually sexual power fantasies inside his mind (one even with his own sister, whom he treats like absolute garbage) and the negative ones many times are acts of violence, gore, or just show his overall hatred and distrust of everything. Of course, he never actually acts upon any of these delusions or does anything whatsoever. ALL this guy does is whine like the world owes him anything and does nothing to change his sad and pathetic state of affairs. He just wants to go and play his MMO til 5 AM and not engage with the real world at all and then stare at his anime figures for some sort of fulfilment, and he acts like women are all terrible bitches and sluts. He regularly looks down on everyone despite being the waste of society. It is truly impressive how this game managed to capture the incel mindset perfectly because he really does hit all the marks of thinking women owe him something and thinking he deserves better despite not actively trying to do anything to change himself for the better, and throughout the entire VN his mental state and mindset never really change for the better either. At the end of the VN he is honestly still an utter waste of space. At one point I wanted to strangle him when near the end of the one of the character routes he witnessed possibly the most disturbing and messed up backstory I have ever seen a character have, and his first thoughts upon seeing this were about how she could protect him and what she could do for him instead of any kind of real sympathy or desire to help her and be there for her. Takumi Nishijou is an absolute vile and disgusting creature and I wish him absolutely no happiness, but that is also a big part of the game and what makes it such a fascinating and interesting VN because the writing execution is honestly perfect. Do not play this if you want the protagonist to grow as a person and have good development, you are inside the head of the exact type of person who would never do that. Even in the true ending he's still mostly a piece of shit with only one redeeming moment.

The rest of the game is basically a murder mystery with a lot of interesting theming and a well told story and much of the game is Takumi believing he's the next target of these murders and how he just wants to be left alone and have nothing to do with anything so he can live his pathetic NEET life. The other characters in the VN are fairly interesting with Rimi being a pretty good standout for me but I do think the cast overall was one thing the game could have maybe done a bit better since some characters still didn't feel super fleshed out or interesting even with their own character routes. Overall plot is definitely interesting but there is also a lot of disturbing content so do we warned if you decide to play. I'm a major fan of how this series has always used suspense/tension and the feeling of impending dread in how they present the scenes in the game to keep you engaged in the content and that is one thing this game absolutely excelled at. There're many gruesome details at times and many events that will make you feel horrible for the characters and begging Takumi to actually act and do something only to see him continue to act selfish and like nothing should involve him, even when it affects those closest to him. It can sometimes be frustrating to read at times, but again I think the game is intentionally written this way since you're inside the mind of quite possibly the worst person ever. There's a lot of things I don't really want to get more into because of spoilers but I do think science adventure is a really nice series with steins;gate being one of the favorite pieces of media ever, so it was interesting to go back to this and especially interesting to seeing the character study of Takumo Nishijou, I wish him no happiness and hope he dies truly.

Chaos;Head is an ambitious start to the "Semicolon in the Middle" series (yeah I know it's called SciADV shut up). With its subversive style of writing that attempts to play around with familiar visual novel conventions, and its meticulousness in both its foreshadowing and implementation of Sci-Fi elements into the plot.
It tells a dark story of broken individuals haunted by the worlds within their minds, as they live their lives trying to cope with trauma, and perhaps even find comfort through connections with others who understand their pain, in a reality that is seemingly out to get them.
And while it can be a bit rough to read through at times (mainly due to some pacing issues in the NoAH routes, and the protagonist being kinda unbearable), it is still an impressive start to one of the genre's hallmark franchises that is worth checking out for its grim atmosphere and interesting cast of characters.

Also Desire Blue Sky is still better than A Will shaking and crying rn...

Do I agree with a lot of the big flaws of this title that people have? Yes. Most likely, yes.

But at the same time... it's undoubtedly quite a stand-out VN title. There's nothing QUITE like Chaos;Head and that's kind of commendable considering how dime a dozen the VN market can, has, and will continue to be. The atmosphere is really great. I played a few VNs with psychological elements, but this was probably one of the more effective and well executed ones. I really did feel like I was looking at the world through the eyes of a paranoid, delusional kid. The game really messes with your head, and it makes it easy to empathize with Takumi's constant episodes since I'm just as unsure of what's real and what's not as he is.

The cast is fine. NoAH does some work at giving the characters much more depth and that's appreciated even if most of them are a bit meh all in all. Especially considering the slog of skipping through most of the game repeatedly just to reach them. Sena and Rimi's routes are at least pretty damn cool though and are big highlights of the whole experience.

I think the story and script is sort of whatever. Nothing really that crazy good to me. But it's the way Chaos;Head PRESENTS that story that makes it quite intriguing and engaging if you open yourself up to it. It's a flawed but interesting title that I think makes up for its shortcomings by having some stand out strengths. It's totally worth playing, especially considering that it's the game that kickstarted one of the most critically acclaimed franchises within the genre.

Also, playing this with Committee of Zero fan patch is an absolute must.

There's something very steady about this game which makes it fine but the more I sit away from it...after doing all the endings...the more I feel like it was a game that went through the motions with some interesting concepts but just felt rather emotionally flat. Which isn't great when you are playing a visual novel since you don't really have other things you are doing to engage you. In a sense I'm torn between rating this higher and lower and ultimately settled in the middle because

Things I liked
-Presentation in terms of visuals, animation and sound effects. they definitely spent budget here. voice acting also excellent.
-Chapter pacing. No chapter felt overly long.
-Not "redeeming" a character just because they are supposed to be on the "good guys" side for the most part.

Things I disliked
-Without saying too much, half the cast, even in their own routes, don't feel really developed. I only ended up caring about one of the 6 girls. 2 were developed okay but I didn't care for them. 3 did have their stories but it also felt like they were there for the count.
-The true ending. I did not like it. It doesn't help that I didn't like the girls' routes that much, except for one.
-Just in general. Like I didn't hate the creepiness of the otaku main character but it also really didn't feel like it had a point emotionally.

Funnily enough I liked the "worst" of the endings the best. Maybe because that's just how I saw the protagonist.

The original Chaos;Head is a flawed, but interesting psychological horror VN.

But for the most part, the addition of the individual character routes remove a good amount of those flaws. They answer and clarify so many moments about the story I was iffy on when I played the original.

Play with the Committee of Zero patch though. The official translation is stilted as all hell.

This game is definitely not for everyone.

But it certainly was for me.

I really don't know... I just loved this VN.
I played through every route, got every ending and all the achievements for it.

I just loved it. I am so happy with my introduction to the science adventure series and I'm super excited to continue on with the rest of the series.

I've literally just finished the game so I'm still reeling a bit from the true ending and just wow.... I wish I could express jus how much I've enjoyed this game but I need some more time to formulate my thoughts.

The very definition of pathetic. It is a constant vicious cycle exercise of self-hatred screaming "I'm sorry for what I am" while regurgitating on the otaku culture that it is so ashamed to belong to. Obviously, neither aspect is remotely well done (though I must admit that the beginning may deceive to think that the game has anything to do, which ends up being revealed to be the worst smelling kamikaze dumpster of fire) and there are some outlines of what the game wants to really do without shame (not to confuse with competently realized, the sci-fi leaning segments hint on what I hope the developers set out to do in further games that ends up being anecdotal in here, the most common storytelling segments regarding more conventional tones like suspense and horror can only be complemented with mediocre when most inspired). This is a game so disgraced that despite its obvious yearn to show the most degenerate and repulsive imagery as part of its critique/fascination self-conscious ironic contradiction it may be one of the few games published by Nitroplus, one of the biggest names on the VN industry that hasn’t yet heard of the word “delicacy”, and come out without even one hentai scene resorting to ridiculous and even more disgusting placeholders instead.

At times, I feel sorrow towards the people who made this, just as they want you to feel some shame for their otaku beyond salvation misogynist walking dirtbag of a protagonist. At the end, both unapologetically embrace the mess of their own heads with so little thought that I just stop caring.

Been meaning to get to this as I did play Chaos;Child a while ago and liked it quite a bit, though can’t actually remember if there were specifics about Chaos;Head’s story to spoil much about it at least. I also played this with the Committee of Zero PC patch, as the official version is apparently so poor it was highly recommended to have it installed as a fix before playing. But was easy enough to get working and didn’t notice any issues with it

This VN was uhhh… good I guess. I think this was definitely more horror esque than I recall from Chaos;Child, mainly due its focus on fear and paranoia. I can understand why this one is more divisive than others in the SciAdv series, as whether you like it or not probably depends on how much you can tolerate the main character Takumi, an immensely pathetic and delusional shut-in, and the game very much tries to make him as unlikable as possible. While I don’t mind the idea of a protag like this, I feel it goes too far with this to the point where it just got exhausting to follow him, and his frequently perverted delusions/dialogue was really not it for me. But will say it was compelling to watch how badly he falls apart as the story progresses

Speaking of, delusions are basically the main mechanic of the game and you choose between a positive or negative one. Though for the most part didn’t really care for this, as for the first playthrough it has no bearing on the story aside for seeing some minor scene changes (Chaos;Child was like this also I think). This changes after you finish the first time and I think leads to the different endings depending on what you choose (though I don’t see how you can get those without a guide tbh), but note to get the true ending of the game you have to get every other ending first, which basically means you’ll be restarting the game and fast forwarding through over and over. The skipped text will also keep getting interrupted by the delusion prompts each time which got tedious

As of now I think I prefer Chaos;Child, but I might get around to replaying it to better compare and use the PC patch it has also. Chaos;Head’s an interesting horror VN, but do feel as the first in the series you can tell where its successors refine on it a bit more

The new routes are all at least decent, with a few routes being standouts compared to the others, though I do think their importance has been a bit overblown (I imagine mainly because they simply weren't available in English up until recently).
It's certainly nice to see the heroines get more time focused on them, but Chaos;Head itself is a complete story, and while the new content reveals a few more things not in the original game, they still feel largely supplemental. If you didn't like Chaos;Head to begin with, these probably aren't going to change your opinion.
I'm also not a fan of the choice to make these romantic routes. Giving Takumi romantic routes with all of the heroines feels so tone-deaf to his character arc in the game. It feels as though the writers might have realized this too, as the romance elements are definitely downplayed, but it still feels out of place, and I think most of the routes would have been better without it.

Where this release fails, unfortunately, is its presentation compared to the original PC release. Noah is often touted as the "Definitive edition" of Chaos;Head, but this is really in terms of it having additional content only.
For starters. I'm not a fan of the choice to change the letterboxed image with the text box below it to an inset text box. There is of course, no way in hell a publisher is going to retain a 4:3 aspect ratio when the visual part of the game is practically widescreen to begin with, but it doesn't change the fact that the game looks worse for it. Aside from my preference of the text below the image just looking nice, the textbox often clutters up the screen, especially since Chaos;Head makes use of a lot of diegetic text, which can sometimes appear behind the actual textbox.
The real travesty here though is what they did to the delusion trigger system. In the original release, the delusion triggers appeared in the space above the image. This of course, needed to be reworked, given that the space no longer even exists in Noah, and the new UI for it just looks terrible.
In the original, the delusion triggers would, visually speaking, appear subtly during a scene. The main indicator was not visuals, but the loud pulsating sound effect that accompanied it. The sound is somewhat annoying, but it all plays into the mechanic. Once you click one of the delusions, the sound goes away, and it really makes you WANT to give into Takumi's delusions, especially in some of the scenes where the delusion trigger is visible for a longer time.
The new system on the other hand, announces its presence by bulldozing into the scene with a screen-covering effect, with a transitional effect you're forced to watch, even when fast-forwarding. Furthermore, actually clicking either of the triggers covers the remaining portion of the screen in a green or red swirl, and starts a loud heartbeat sound effect that doesn't leave until the end of the trigger period. It's almost the exact opposite of how it was executed originally.
There's also the structural changes, which I'm not too huge on either. In the original Chaos;Head, there was practically no reason to get the normal ending at all. After all, it's literally just the true ending, but it's missing the final scene. Not only that, but the ending feels incomplete without the true ending scene, and the alternate Ending B isn't unlocked until you beat the true ending anyways. The choice to end the game on Ending B (an overt bad end at that) AFTER the player has already seen the true ending is certainly an odd one, but Noah only exacerbates this problem further. With 1 ending now changed to 7 unlocked from clearing the game for the first time, there's now over 10 hours worth of content unlocked after already getting what is essentially the real ending.
Noah attempts to remedy this by changing things so that you can only get the normal ending on a first playthrough, with the true ending locked behind finishing the other routes, but it ends up doing more harm than good. The normal ending still represents most of the true ending, which means that the structure still suffers from having 10+ hours of content after the climax. On top of that, the true ending itself is only actually a couple of lines, so it ends up in an awkward spot where the normal ending isn't satisfying on it's own, and the true ending isn't substantial enough to stand on its own 10 hours after the normal ending. I can't say I don't understand the reasoning behind this, but it ultimately doesn't solve the problem, and mainly just amounts to rereading the climax for a second time.

I could get into more minor complaints (like how they ruined Takumi's figure shelf), but I'll leave my nitpicking out of this. Is all of this enough to ruin the experience? Certainly not. Many people will probably see these as minor complaints, and would rather just play the version with all the content, and that's fine. Plus, CoZ's new translation will probably be more than enough to steer anyone away from playing the original version, but I can't help but think the best way to experience Chaos;Head would be a version with all of the new content that still retains the presentation of the original version.

seemingly pivots its unhealthy painting of CHUUNIBYOU-ISMS and such as actually totally alright and not worth examining at all. shut up and wield your magic sword; there are pretty women out there who LOVE YOU for no reason!!!

it's all fun and games about getting into the headspace of a real anxiety ridden, delusional NEET boy and maybe identifying we should better ourselves..... at least until the thing decides to just LOSE its fucking mind and totally forgoes that potentially relatable human feeling shit for an unironic power fantasy about ACTUALLY saving the world from evil mind-control corporations.

seriously tho??? even when the story already SHOWED US just how stupid it sounds to be so paranoid and self important thinking????? It WASN'T ironic??????? what a fumble...

i think every so-so vn I've ever read has been bolstered up a few points now that I have this real nothing burger of an experience to compare to. you are NOT valid in your delusions, kids. grow up and learn how to talk to people. please!

unironically the only character that was enjoyable to have on screen was misumi

the only good writing was the narration of takumi in the horror sense of being seen with the whole whos eyes thing. takumis depiction of anxiety was pretty okay, the nanami ringtone scene in his room with the hand was definitely really, really well executed, so much that i'll give this game an extra star (2 in total, wow!)

many of the elements of the games story cater to a 12 year olds fantasy.. or fat people who live in their moms basement and unironically use terms like waifu

terrible main character. the attempt of redeeming him after 15 hours of torture is pathetic. plot is almost interesting but.. cheesy with all the swords and stuff. so unnecessary. terrible pacing throughout the chapters. weak ass plot twists too

just play steins gate instead. this is not worth playing if you are interested in intricate fiction, for the time investment of a visual novel, it sucks.

though i finished one ending, i don't think i even want to play the other endings. also put me off playing chaos child.

So I beat the normal endings back when the CoZ patch came out but I just went back and finished all the bonus routes and got the true end so I feel better equipped to do a real review.

This game is an absolute mess, a weird and wild patchwork of edgelord horror tropes, evangelion-level psychobabble, bishoujo stereotypes, and straight up magical girl anime nonsense. It's excessive, and it's kind of embarrassing, like peeking into someone's journal of half finished fanfics. And yeah, I love it to pieces.

What I love about the VN space is that I just can't think of any other genre that could get away with something like this. It is, straight up, a psychological horror game, but it's also a game where a bunch of anime girls are inexplicably drawn to just some fuckin' dude and wield psychic swords borne of their own traumas. For all intents and purposes, this shouldn't work.

But it really, really does, and I think that speaks to level of craft on display here. This game has an impeccable sense of mood and atmosphere, masterfully wielding sound design, tricks of prose, and sudden edits to make the fairly rudimentary silicon graphics presentation utterly envelop the reader. When the game had me, it really fuckin' had me, in a way that few other horror VNs manage as well.

I also think that focusing the story on Takumi allows the story to both comment on its own excesses while giving us the insight to empathize with a genuinely awful dude who, if we're being honest, we at one point had more in common with than we'd like to admit. The fact that most of the early delusions come from a wastoid otaku has the neat effect of making the later story developments actually feel grounded by comparison, and the delusion concept itself allows the story to play with fire without (usually) burning itself.

And the way the game has empathy, but not sympathy, for Takumi is genuinely compelling. He's an awful, selfish, shallow guy, who is also deeply traumatized and dealing with a severe and debilitating anxiety disorder, and the game allows both to exist simultaneously without one overwhelming the other. People are complicated, and you really never know what they're going through, for good and for ill.

That's not to say this game always succeeds. This is the first of the SciADV games and it gives the impression that the writers were afraid they'd never get to do another, because it throws everything at the wall. And, especially with 6 routes added by Noah, not all of it sticks. Sena's route is dull and of interest only for the lore-heads; Nanami's is a complete waste of time; and there are several chapters that, upon revisiting, have that Kojima monologue feeling of "hey, wanna hear something cool I read on wikipedia?"

But that all said, I'm glad I came back and fully finished the game—the extra character development really does add some depth and edge to the game's bishoujo critiques, and Rimi's route is genuinely some of the best written material in the game. The impression I've gotten from the community is that this is thought of as the worst of the series—if so, i'm stoked to see what's next.

Chaos;Head Noah was just a miserable time for me from start to finish. It is ambitious in a way, and there are some enjoyable moments, but ultimately the game fails at just about everything. First of all, the main character is probably the worst protagonist I have ever seen in any media whatsoever. Not simply because he is an incel, but because the game never comments on anything he does or just in general, has anything meaningful to say about this type of personality disorder. Side characters are as bland as possible and most of the time they just serve to drive the plot forward. The story in itself is basically just pseudoscience that never establishes any rules on how this pseudoscience functions, meaning that the game can basically pull anything out of its ass if it wants to. Also, sexualizing minors is a fucking no-go, regardless of the country in which this game was developed.

While the atmosphere, mystery, and general sense of unease during the first few hours was enough to get me interested, Chaos Head never really capitalized on those elements in a meaningful way. The mystery never actually goes anywhere, the tension in the atmosphere soon gives way to some sort of shitty chuunibyou power fantasy, and none of the ideas or concepts at play ever get more than a surface level analysis (and most don't even end up mattering to the overall narrative).

Very little of what Chaos Head does past its first 3-4 hours really felt worth experiencing. The delusions are painfully underdeveloped as a mechanic and just feel like a way the game can do whatever it needs to move the story forward, the side characters may have one or two interesting aspects about them but rarely contribute in a meaningful way outside of the one chapter where they play a role, and the main character's schtick of being a paranoid shut-in is interesting at first but quickly runs out of steam.

But what brings this from mediocre to outright bad is just how badly Chaos Head manages to botch its pacing. The game has its two main routes (though one is essentially just an infodump for clearing up loose ends that never got explained elsewhere) as well as an additional route for each of its heroines. You need to get through all of these before you can unlock the true ending, effectively requiring 8 playthroughs. But the game makes doing this such a monumental pain because of how they are spread out.

The two main routes are simple enough. You just gotta get through the story and make specific choices each time. But what's especially annoying is the 6 character-specific routes since the point at which you 'enter' a route is near the very beginning of the game but everything is the same until quite late into the game, meaning (barring a small handful of extra scenes) you need to spend 20-30 minutes per route just skipping through text you have already read. And this is made even worse by the fact that the skip function is very finnicky, stalling the game whenever it reaches a choice, often not skipping certain voice lines for unclear reasons thus slowing down the speed at which you can get through the game, and refusing to skip certain scenes entirely because one line changed even though 99% of the scene is exactly what you've seen before.

Put that together and you're looking at around 15% of your total playtime being nothing but skipping scenes and a very large chunk of the rest of the story being very poorly paced for other reasons. Get through all of that and you can finally get to the true ending... which literally turns out to be one extra scene that adds no meaningful details about anything that happened in the story. I genuinely feel like 15 hours of my time was wasted in the hopes that something towards the end might reignite the interesting stuff the game was doing at first. Some sort of twist or extra detail that might compensate for the game's other shortcomings. But that was not to be.

So yeah... I wouldn't bother. The few areas that Chaos Head did well never really mattered while its flaws grow ever worse as the story goes on. I really can't think of a good reason why I might recommend this to somebody because even somebody who is interested in the premise and has low standards for everything else would still probably walk away disappointed.