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...

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."

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.

I think a lot of people might be disappointed by this from the reputation it has in the English VN community prior to a translation, but I liked it a lot. I've been waiting for Noah since 2017 or 2018, and was happy with this. Most of the character routes are good, but none of them are long enough to overstay their welcome, which helps a lot. It is a much more complete experience than the original Chaos;Head release, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Horror/Denpa VNs, even if it might not click with some. Plus, the Committee of Zero fan patch (with its own translation) helps a lot. The amount of passion, effort, and quality but into that patch is extremely admirable.

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.

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.

The start of it all in the Science Adventure series. I never thought I'd give this title a shot after I watched the horrific anime adaptation years ago, but Chaos;Child really changed my mind. With the majority of what I watched forgotten about after I pushed it out of my memory, I went in to this as blind as could be after I had played Chaos;Child, and it was a great time. This visual novel is nowhere near perfect, but it's far from being bad. It's a good VN that suffers from some clunky story structure and literal game development problems, but it still delivers a satisfying journey to embark on with multiple interesting characters and events.

The biggest problem is the protagonist, Takumi. He is weak in many regards, so he's not all that fun to follow at times in the story. But his weakness is everyone else's gain, as the story, events, and characters that surround Takumi become interesting and engaging. So I'd say it all balances out. Other than that, I'd say that there's one or two other characters that just don't end up having much of a purpose in the end, which really bummed me out. One of them just gets used as everyone's punching bag in almost every route, which really stinks. But other than that, I have no complaints with the characters. While some are quirky and weird, they're still very enjoyable.

Similarly to Chaos;Child, this title has the same approach of having everything being confusing and hard to follow as you go through the story, up until when things get revealed at the end of the common route and in the character routes. It's fun trying to figure out what's happening even so many things seem extremely disjointed and not coherent whatsoever. At times I kinda just gave up and accepted that everything is just a chaotic mess, especially with the concept of delusions. But things do come together, and it's satisfying connecting the puzzle pieces at the end of the common route and in the following alternate/character routes.

Finally, the most shared complaint is how clunky and messy this game is. This title was actually shipped out broken, where many reported that they couldn't even view the final route's ending sequences, which prevented them from finishing the game! Luckily this was fixed with an update, but there are also other problems. You have to cap the game to 60fps to avoid animations being too quick, having certain USB controllers plugged in will freak the game out in menus, the font is terrible, there's no quotations around spoken dialogue, etc. It's also unfortunate that there is cut content shipped with this game. It's super depressing for a title that many in the Science Adventure community looked forward to having all of these issues.

There is a patch that fixes some of the problems I listed, however it changes the official translation to that of a fan translation. If you use this patch, you have to use the translation that a team of Science Adventure series fans put together, which is fine. There are names and such that have been changed for a variety of reasons as they expect you to always use their patches in all other Science Adventure titles. If you don't mind that, then you do get a better font, quotations on dialogue, and the return of cut content (specifically a collection of scenes that pop up in the alternate route after completing the common route, which isn't necessary to view, but preferred in my opinion). Either way, you can absolutely play the game with or without the patch, as both translations seem to be totally fine (they both tell the same story). I played the first ~6 chapters of the common route without the patch and the rest with it. It's quite obvious of there being some glaring changes in the fan translation, like the mentioned name changes, more cursing, more aggressiveness out of Takumi, and localized lines and more modern internet slang.

In the end, I'd say this is a visual novel everyone who enjoys VNs should try out. This is a great introduction to the Science Adventure series, and also the obviously preferred one, but Steins;Gate still works as a good alternative introduction to the series. While it may not be the strongest in the series, Chaos;Head Noah is absolutely worth the time and effort to figuring out the big question of... Whose Eyes Are Those Eyes? And hey, if you went through Chaos;Child first, no worries! You didn't spoil too much and there's still a wild adventure to embark on. Plus, it'll open your eyes to some new stuff that'll make going through Chaos;Child again worth it.

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.

Honestly while I love this game a lot I do feel like several of the routes feel like wasted potential (Nanami and Yua's specifically)

I'm glad they most likely noticed this and had less but more fleshed out routes in Chaos;Child however

Rimi, Kozue and Sena's routes as well as the common route and true ending were amazing though so a couple of mid routes don't really drag it down at least

Route Ratings:
Silent sky: 7.5/10
Cry Sky: 6/10
Nanami: 5/10
Yua: 2/10
Ayase: 7/10
Kouzupii: 7.5/10
Sena: 8.5/10
Rimi: 8.5/10
True: 7/10

✔️Verified Steam Deck compatibility.

The premise and the mystery surrounding the story looked very cool at first, but it ended up being pretty disappointing. You don't really know what's happening half of the time, and the other half is just the MC being a stupid, edgy, mysoginistic and horny otaku.

It's a pretty weak vn, I would only recommend reading it if you're really invested in reading all the Sci-Adv series, otherwise it's safe to skip directly to Steins;Gate.

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

Chaos;Head Noah is a visual novel with quite the history, from it kickstarting one of the best-selling visual novel franchises of all time whilst still being an underdog and not being released overseas for over a decade, and then when it released it was in a broken unreadable mess state that if it hadn't been for the team over at Committee of Zero it would've probably gotten us years for it to actually be able to read it without their professional grade translation. And all of that for a denpa science fiction heavy visual novel that in my opinion is just alright.

But, don't get me wrong. I do like Chaos;Head and I appreciate some things it does, I can't lie when I say there were some times when my jaw completely dropped at some of the most horror or gorier part of the story, some negative delusions, its surreal and philosophical nature too just really sets in the distinct tone of this visual novel that got really watered down in Steins;Gate for better or for worse, and the characters are pretty unique and cool (even though I wish there were more interactions amongst themselves instead of only with Takumi), sadly though sometimes it gets too pretentious with its themes of religion and stuff that really shows that this is pretty much just Neon Genesis Evangelion in the form of a visual novel with its tendency to be about a calamity, be psychological and somewhat erotic at some points as well as showcasing the inner turmoil and problems that confine our main protagonist from just "acting like a normal person".
Some people might hate Takumi Nishijō but you cannot deny that his showcase as a socially inept NEET chunibyo riddled with an anxiety disorder thats a byproduct of both constant self-isolation and growing up in internet culture, his unability to actually talk to other people firmly and just being paranoic as hell wherever he goes is pretty much real, he's an delusional idiot who speaks with anime girl figurines and in his head thinks he's better than anybody else, and it works so well when the story takes the turn of being chuni as hell, kind of like the delusions he imagines and then inserts himself into.

As for the rest of the cast, although I wish some of them had more interactions with themselves or we saw more people in general instead of the world revolving around the same 6 people or so, their routes sometimes really make you care more for them than what you'd usually be if you only read the common route, and that's good although it feels like the bunch of them are just a lot of added backstories, and they can heavily depend on if you truly care about any of the characters in the work.

I'm both not capable and not knowingly enough to talk about the psychological aspect of the work in-depth, as I am not really in the know for any of those topics and the sci-fi concepts really are just evil corpo wants to take over the world deceiving everyone's brains via 5G electromagnetic waves (or some bullshit like that) and then it all just goes back to Takumi having to do everything he does for X or Y motive and then it ends and happy ending. But it's a bit of a brain fuck, they don't hold back for most of these scenes and it's crucial that you pay attention to the distinct themes and concepts that are will be later referenced in next works, and honestly if you don't mind any of this it will not strike as bad, sometimes it can get a little bit boring as they talk in verbose, though.

Now, there's nothing exceedingly wrong with the visual novel. More like a bunch of little things piled up, but I feel like Chaos;Head's worst failure is its exposure. It's very clearly supposed to be a thrilling slow burn of a story, and maybe I am just really bad at reading (After all, I poured 95 hours reading this) but damn is the story padded out with a lot of nothingness very earlier on, and you can tell this when they're still introducing core concepts in later chapters instead of throwing them at you as the story progresses, or keeping them in the heroine routes so they're somewhat of a resource you learn later on to continue on with the true ending of it. But, a lot of it is introduced midway through a very long and oftentimes boring common route, this is most likely the case because the original Chaos;Head just consisted of its common route and endings, but I feel like for its revision they should've stopped the kinetic novel route and actually change up the beats of the story somewhat to actually make those heroine routes be sustainable enough to not feel bored as hell when reading through them (such was my case, but this can definitely be attributed to the fact that you need to skip through the entire game a good 6 times before locking into the routes themselves). Also the PC port was completely shafted out of all the cool effects the console versions had, so every dynamic part that would make you more immersed, such as the Delusion Trigger's static or the immersive sound of parts like Phantasm's concert was pretty much broken, some of it got salvaged by the Overhaul Patch but it's very clear that the bar was in hell.

Gotta admit, in some parts this kinda hit home hard and I'm not proud of that. We gotta do better Takumibros...