A must play for people who like visual novels. While the story can be kind of bland at first and the main character may make you cringe, both get incredibly better as time goes on. Specifically, the main character growing and developing throughout the story into a competent and complex character. The multiple endings are a great touch and let the story explore its many side characters and even different sides of the main character. Even if the true ending kinda renders them unnecessary, they’re still neat. This game has one of the best uses of time travel in storytelling I’ve ever seen, and is a real treat for anyone into the science fiction genre. Again if you’re into visual novels, science fiction, or just think the game looks interesting. Give it a try, and while the opening may be a little slow or confusing at first, chances are you’ll like it.

Steins Gate is probably what you want to recommend your peers to if you want show them a glimpse of the visual novel medium can do. Its duration is perfect, a sci-fi mystery thriller, good characters, and some poignant themes and remarks on time travel, will, and being. Some missteps were made in what I felt in the later chapters but the way the plot is wrapped up and connects back to the beginning is probably one of the best moments of brilliance I've experienced. I would probably rate this higher if I wasn't so spoiled by playing other VNs that broke my standards at the time when I played this.

Spoilers in the review because who even cares anymore

Steins;Gate is one of the most successful mess ever written. It is a confused, overlong slog devoid of characters, pacing and meaning. A walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

It presents itself as a comedic, thriller-themed, sci-fi-ish slice of life piece about a group of wacky nerdy friends, as aware and believable in their roles as the big bang theory’s cast, which spends the first half of the game concluding nothing of relevance and the latter half of the game undoing the former. There is a significant attempt to deliver a message about the importance of free will in humanity, about our own limits, to face and accept the choices and consequences of our own free will and actions, establishing that we cannot have an ideal, easy, cotton-candy life because there is always a part of the world beyond our control, that we do have an impact on the world, and then the message is sent down the flush because we need an happy ending so here’s the resolution done off-screen for the main characters and believe in yourself, coincidence and improvisation will solve every conflict. Hours after reading through the misery of characters you are supposed to like, the game just gives you the comfortable solution that none of that matters, people will still be happy and you have to pretend those conflict never existed.

The protagonist, okabe, is a useless slab of wasted air, he fancies himself a science genius when he has no theoretical expertise aside from googling and reading stuff on Wikipedia and online boards, no technical skill, if it were not for the clear instructions others give him. Every major important concept in the story is introduced, theorized, discussed, solved and then engineered by someone else, he just uses them with barely knowing how any of those work. He also behaves like a daft twat for half of the game toward anyone, yet people still stick around him and act like he’s a dear friend despite being showered in his chauvinism, arrogance and terrible, terrible manners. When at the midpoint of the story he’s supposed to grow and start act like a caring individual, as said before he just undoes and forgets gradually every conflict his ‘friends’ have, and when he has to face the consequences of his actions, once again someone else hands him the deus ex machina, without him having to do any effort except crying and be sad about it for a bit. You aren’t even given the time to assimilate and feel the weight of the events, as you already expect a convenient solution to be on the way by that point.

The pacing is all over the place: many chapters that should be focused on progressing the story just digress and forget any sense of urgency despite time being the central idea of the story. A whole chapter is dedicated to having someone win a yu-gi-oh tournament, which isn’t even the main conflict of the arc’s protagonist, and then the real issue is presented and quickly dealt with in ten minutes before undoing it again and moving on to someone else’s life to ruin. This is gorilla-tier writing, how do you spend over half of your chapters’ length like this, with no editor to cut out the unnecessary bits, is beyond me.

The side cast is a mix of unfunny, clichéd anime tropes, with the major actors being a dumb happy-go-lucky girl whose major defining traits are being dumb and happy-go-lucky, a supposedly genius engineer and hacker constantly acting like a dangerous sexual molester, a psychotic super soldier so stupid she’d forget to eat or breath if you didn’t tell her to, another psychotic super soldier which should solve all the plot within minutes of playing start but there’s another idiot I guess, the genius tough but shy girl that should sound conflicted but actually has an emotional disorder and is just made fun of by everyone else, writer included. I didn’t even touch upon the token moe stereotype with no growth because, let’s face it, all the female characters can easily apply for the role.

The CGI and character design are hideous, poorly drawn, with terrible proportions and depth, weird colouring, unnatural and unhuman faces, body proportions and expressions (those eyes will hunt me in my sleep), that make the story seem like it takes place in alternate universe where everyone is the creature from the movie ‘the fly’. Credit where credit is due, the voice acting work and sound is pretty impressive, there are some really powerful tracks in the background music and most of the voice actors, from miyano mamoru to seki tomokazu, from tamura yukari to googling imai asami, each of them play their roles and the emotions they should convey very well.

That being said, even as a sound novel steins;gate is still overlong and riddled with dumb twists and nonsense to serve shock value rather than compelling, meaningful progression and satisfying conclusions based on its own terms, development and themes. If you want a visual novel dealing with sci-fi and thriller there’s plenty of dumb fun to be had with the nonary games, as bad as those can get, or just read chaos;child and experience the better sci;adv novel.

Steins;Gate is a visual novel at its finest and tells one of the foremost and most complex time travel stories you could ever experience in all of media.

It features fascinatingly detailed and unique artworks, an atmospheric and playful soundtrack, well-written and relatable characters and interactive choices leading to different endings hitting your emotions in a different way. Critique of Japanese pop culture and society are merged with a dramatic, joyful and humorous narrative, science fiction adventure and love stories - all of it is excellently balanced.

The script is wonderfully translated and tips are explaining Japanese memes, cultural references and more, preventing you from getting confused. I personally recommend the original Steins;Gate visual novel, but ELITE is doing fine as well, if you have no access to the original.

Steins;Gate is one of the most cathartic experiences I've ever had.

even if you get past the insidious and varied transmisogyny, the fact that the main character is a sexual predator and one of his close friends is The Pervert(tm), the infantilization of one of its female leads and the cardboard cutout tsundere archetype of the other one, the racism of having the only black men in the game be aggressive and violent thugs who do immoral things, the fact that this is a very loosely concealed harem game with a fast and loose interpretation of science and physics, the fact that the main character is braindead and cannot engage in basic rationalization to predict one of the most obvious plot twists in any video game ever...

even if you can get past all of that, this game is just fucking bad and sucks big shit lol

To sum it up, there's not a single piece of media (and I mean that) so consistent with it's inner physics of time travel and at the same time using them for actual plot and character development. This VN has it all: one of the best, if not the best, protagonist ever written in japanese media, a wonderful support cast, fantastic soundtrack, excellent pacing and some of the best plot twists I've ever seen. This is my ultimate favorite thing ever when it comes to entertainment and would give it 100 stars if I could.