Great visual novel with clear "repetitivity" problems. Don't get me wrong, I loved Chaos;Head, but I think it's undeaniable that when Takumi complains about imagining things or being scared (with an amazing VA work behind) for the 5th time it starts to get tiring.

Nevertheless, I can complete see why people enjoy this VN. It has very shocking moments and a sense of tension that never fully quite comes. All the character routes are amazing, and I'll be honest I found the lack of moral bounds to be quite refreshing for a VN where the protagonist is such a shut-in.

"We all have a Takumi inside is, whether we give it form or not is a thing, an alter-ego of our conciousness, which knows no bounds."

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.

I'm sorry, but man I really did just NOT like this one, which sucks because I know a lot of people really dig it, but honestly I think it's kinda just a mess.

The protagonist Takumi does develop over the course of this yeah, but still from beginning to end I just found him completely insufferable, literally feeling the need to point out that "WHOH THIS IS JUST LIKE MYE EROUGAYZZ" it is just insufferable, and while the game does try to act like it's "above" being coomer bait, it honestly really really isn't, even during serious scenes it often feels the need to remind you what it really is, I mean there's literally DLC that puts all the girls in underwear.

Speaking of, MAN I just didn't like ANY of the characters here, some of them do have some interesting stuff going for them, but the game does absolutely NOTHING with them even during their dedicated routes. In general I just think it's kinda poorly writen all around, big revelations don't have any of the oomf they're supposed to, shit kinda just happens, especially towards the end of the main campaign which feels rushed as hell.

With that said, yeah there are a few interesting ideas thrown around, it sucks that I've yet to find a Denpa I really like, cuz I do dig the idea behind them, but I tend to dislike the execution.

But yeah in the end of the day, this was decently entertaining it points if only due to the will to see where the hell it was gonna go early on, but I'm sorry, I'm gonna be honest, I think this was a bad Visual Novel. I didn't care for Chaos;Head Noah, and I doubt I ever will...

7.5/10. If nothing else, this is an extremely unique story. Our protagonist being your stereotypical 4chan neet living in a container home of all things and being extremely paranoid and schizophrenic makes for a weirdly compelling atmosphere and mystery story. For all intents and purposes he is extremely hateable, but he has his moments.

The side cast and villians are goodish, but fairly underwhelming and not good enough to carry their individual routes. The main story and first playthrough feels quite unique due to the delusion system, but any replays for other routes is just tedious with them. Mystery is pretty damn good, box scene got me good.

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.