Review on Reddit with Images

IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE

-Visual Novel

-Live Action based

-Mystery, comedy and some romance

-No Voice Dialogue

-Multiple Endings, One True End

-INTRODUCTION-

Originally released for the Wii back in 2008 by Chunsoft (later merged to become Spike Chunsoft), 428: Shibuya Scramble (SS) remarkably received a perfect score by one of Japan's largest video game magazine, Famitsu. It was an achievement that was attained by only eight other games at that time. What really set it apart from many Visual Novels is the usage of live action shots to tell the story as opposed to 2D anime portraits. Even for Visual Novel players, they probably won't even realize it's a Visual Novel by looking at a random screenshot of the game.

Based on what I've found on the game's background, the developers had real life actors essentially act out the story scenarios within Shibuya and thousands of pictures were taken during that time. These shots were then incorporated into the game. While other Visual Novels may have existed that used a similar style, this game stands out among the ones released for consoles for the West.

STORY

The story starts out with the kidnapping of a college girl and the police are already called in to assist in a money exchange for the kidnapped girl. From there, the story grows into something much bigger that would involve the entire city of Shibuya. Without going into heavy spoilers, the main story plays out like a crime/mystery Japanese drama. The entire game also takes place for less than a day (roughly 10 hours altogether), but there is a lot of story content packed into the small timeframe. The mystery is engaging as players piece together the information they get as they progress further into the story.

What SS does well in the story is that all of its plot lines (despite appearing unrelated) come together at the end and fit comfortably with the story's big picture. Other than the mystery aspect, the story is full of emotional and comedic scenes to strike a good balance throughout and prevent it from being a 20 hour plus serious and depressing story.

Even if the story is well done overall, it still isn't perfect. For a mystery based story, many of the story developments are rather predictable. This is partly due to how the story reveals some obvious clues throughout. Intentional or not, it can hurt the mystery experience, but fortunately, not much in my opinion. Also, the story is kind of slow at the start despite the significant kidnapping event. The story doesn't really pick up until 1-2 chapters later if not already invested at the beginning.

CHARACTERS

The game consists of 5 main protagonists (only two available in the prologue). Each of them are completely different from another which makes each character storyline a very different experience. There's a young detective playing a large role in arresting the criminals and saving the kidnapped girl, a jobless young man and former "gang" leader who winds up escorting the kidnapped girl's sister, a veteran journalist helping out his old friend settle a debt by writing various articles, a girl in a cat costume trying to earn money to buy a necklace, and finally there's a scientist specializing in viruses. All of these characters have a good deal of depth and receive substantial character development. They are all quite likable and sympathetic.

Other than the main characters, there's a large number of secondary characters in the game as well. Even for the really minor ones, they are written in a way that they stand out and are not easily forgettable. Usually full of exaggerated quirks.

SOUND/MUSIC

I am not a huge fan of the individual tracks in the game, but what the tracks do well is that they fit in each of their specific scenes very well which further bolster story scenes and events. This also applies to the sound effects in the game. Character specific tracks also do a good job in representing the characters and making them more memorable.

GAMEPLAY

As briefly touched on already, there are five main protagonist so the gameplay revolves around their stories. At any point in the story, players can freely switch to any other character story in the timeline. This is important when avoiding or getting Bad Ends (there are more than 50 of them in the game). The main goal of the game is to guide the main characters to their final destination at the end of the game. To do that, players must pick the correct story decisions throughout each character's story. The decision not only impacts the character's own story, but it also impacts the other character's as well. As such, it is quite easy for characters to reach a Bad End or simply an end to their story. Players need to constantly switch story lines and make sure that they avoid such endings. It can be difficult without a guide, but there are hints given at each of the Bad Ends.

I personally used a guide throughout the game and while it is possible to beat it without a guide, I recommend using one for a more efficient use of time. It can be difficult to figure out what triggers a Bad End and what decisions need to be made to avoid them. With 5 concurrent storylines, key decisions can be influenced by multiple characters and multiple decisions which altogether, can be a pain to deal with.

You can switch timelines at any time and go to specific events. The timeline reflects new changes such as new paths or ends.

FINAL REMARKS

The game has decent length. It's not too short, but not too long either. It takes a little over 20 hours to complete the main story and get all of the Bad Endings using a guide. Without one, I expect it can take up to 30 hours or more. There are some additional side stories to unlock after beating the game, but they are not particularly long.

Despite the interesting use of live action shots, the game is not voiced at all (except for the unlockable anime special). The overall result isn't too bad, but I personally felt that voiceovers would enhance a number of scenes.

The game's Visual Novel mechanics is good such as having the ability to switch to previously viewed scenes on the fly, but there are some mechanics that hinder the experience. The first is the rather slow text. Many Visual Novels give the option to increase the text speed as they appear, but SS does not have such an option. The default text speed actually ranges from slow to just decent at times. As someone who naturally reads fast, it can be annoying to wait for the dialogue and text to play out.

In addition to that, there's no "skip text already read" option. There are times when you're forced to view the same scene more than once, especially to trigger multiple Bad Ends, and a combination of the slow text speed and no option to skip the text, it makes it more frustrating than it needs to be.

One note about the Bad Ends is that despite the large amount of them, there's quite a number of them that are just basically small variations of the same scene or just told from another perspective. These are not fun to watch.

The game does have an anime tie-in called Canaan. It's actually a sequel to the game and should be avoided before playing the game because it does spoil parts of the game.

Overall, Shibuya Scramble is a unique Visual Novel experience that is recommended for Visual Novel fans and even those that are interested in venturing into the genre. It is a great experience overall and really stands out among the many Visual Novel titles out there.

pretty crazy!! tonally its a bit like a yakuza game (goofy substories and all) but with the timeline fuckery and wild plot twists of a zero escape game. definitely some really really good moments in here, 100% check this out if you're a fan of other chunsoft mystery vns. it's got too many flaws[1] for me to give it a 9 but know that it's pretty damn close! should be way more popular than it is, pretty much the only acclaim i hear about this game is within vn circles, and this definitely deserves to have a lot more outside reach than it does. certainly a much more accessible vn for people who don't play vns than i surmise the grasshopper manufacture ones are (at least judging from the first half of the silver case i played a while back lmao)

the weakest bit is around the middle when the game goes from having a comedy focus with mystery undertones to a mystery focus with comedic undertones. both of these sections are good alone of one another (and sometimes in concert with one another--you'll see) but the transitional period was a bit rough since I had to readjust how seriously i was taking things lol. shouldn't be as much of a problem if you know it's coming, but once you power through that its really solid for the last several in-universe hours. really gripping stuff

[1] main ones that pop up in my mind are:
- at points some really bizarre tone shifts that are hard to keep up with (what with all of the jumping in and out of stories in the middle of them that you end up doing)
- the mystery bits being weak in the first half and the comedy bits being weak in the second half
- being a little too trial and error-y in the last timeblock specifically, but it is a much more minor lingering issue throughout the whole game (mitigated by the fact that many of the bad endings are interesting/funny enough so that you don't really mind)
- too many flashbacks near the end in general, not a huge issue but the game just starts having a ton of them out of nowhere lol
- a pretty cumbersome port (no mouse support or skip button? wtf)
- a couple side plotlines fizzle out near the end and dont really get any sort of real conclusion as the main mystery takes center stage, predominantly thinking about 2 characters here, won't say which 2 as thatd probably fall under spoilers but ppl who have played can probably deduce who im talking about

The intertwining stories of each character mesh really well, but the game-y elements considerably drags them down.

Analyzing the plot or trying to critique it would take length, yeah some plot twists are very cliché but overall the writing does a great job weaving the stories to cross and overlap.

428 tries to balance your experience by barring the continuation of one story too far unless you catch up with other characters, choices here affect characters there and so on, but it gets tedious through the third quarter, requiring you to pick specific combinations to progress, I honestly needed to google a few points to be able to continue.

428 is a LONG visual novel, taking over 30 hrs with me to wrap it up, unless you suffer from a short attention span I'd recommend you try it.

A really charming and interesting interconnecting story game. The game has some great writing and balances it's humor with it's dective mystery story that has many layers going on all around it. Multiple protaginists that once they get going shift to another person's persecptive in another place and time and told in a non linear fashion. There will be times when you can't progress with one persons story until you reach another persons story to a certain point. It's a really innovative way to tell a story like this and can really only be done with video games. Their are a ton of bad ends and funny ends and it can be a real puzzle to figure out what you have to do in one scenario to fix a problem in another scenario. It's just such a wonderful story. The cast is great and it kept me guessing to the end. The music fits the game exceptionally well too. It's got some bangers in there. Plus even after the game there is still a ton of stuff to do with a bunch of post game stories and content. Overall is a huge package and quality for a title of this nature. This is one I could recomment to anyone.

Platinum #93

A visual novel that tackles a mystery around a kidnapping through the (mis)adventures of several fancy characters. The choices you make on one of the routes impact the others, and the way these interactions affect the outcome of each individual's story is basically the core of the game. The game reminded me a lot of 13 Sentinels, and while the story is somewhat simpler and there are less characters in 428, the way their fates intertwine is certainly a lot more elaborate. There are over 80 outcomes that you might encounter, though most of them are just comical, and it's really fascinating when you try to prevent a certain situation of happening.

The game doesn't have an anime artstyle, instead it's live action with a mostly Japanese cast. I wouldn't say I'm used to that kind of games that emit jDrama vibes, but I didn't mind it at all and even if some of the actors seemed a bit off, others felt perfect on their role. This stylistic choice made it pretty unique in my eyes, over other games of the genre, and it managed to sell the absurdness of some scenes really well.

As far as the story goes, while I feel I wasn't really engrossed with some of the characters at the start, by the end of the story I think I was attached with everyone. Some of the routes start a bit slow, with seemingly irrelevant plot threads, but as you progress through them and the stories start to converge, things become a lot spicier. There are several big twists in it, some are kind of easy to guess, others felt a lot more shocking, the story is certainly very enjoyable though, full of funny or cool moments. Worth mentioning that a lot of side characters are also very amusing, even if they play a small role in the bigger picture. Osawa's route was probably my favorite, and a certain detective contributed to that.

Overall, even if some elements like the live action aren't everyone's cup of tea, I'd still recommend this game in a heartbeat, especially to fans of stuff like the Nonary Games or 13 Sentinels. The mystery and the characters are more than enough to engross you to this story about Shibuya completely.