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.

My VN experience is really small so I wouldn’t really know what to comment on length or any of that stuff that VN’s are usually judged on. I’m planning to eventually play through every SciADV game so maybe at some point I’ll understand more about the genre. This was.. good? I think? I really enjoyed the mystery and psychological aspects, though I absolutely could not stand Taku (the protagonist.) I do think he was meant to be an unlikeable character, in which case he was actually written very well. I also tried watching the anime adaptation afterwards but it was mainly a huge clusterfuck of suckage and honestly I feel like you’re better off watching gameplay on youtube or just playing the game itself instead if you have the time.
Y'all are going to jail for that ending.

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!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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