It crashed into the post-true route stuff, I don't know how to get around the crashing (it might be possible, I'd imagine the PC version is more stable than the PSP fan translation, I might even have accidentally used an old version of it) but since I reached the main ending, I guess it's time to move onto Ever17.
Awesome story though, although lots of interesting elements are in (later released) games. Not sure what's original and what the true origin of plot points and tropes and stuff are. Whatever. I just wish it didn't crash so I got to see more Okuhiko suffering :(

None of the stories are particularly interesting as "stories" (they're fine for further characterisation, but they're generally uneventful) and you can't save or advance text manually, it's all slow and automatic. It would be definitely worth checking out if you could advance text at your own pace, but since that's not possible, it's a slow and unpleasant experience.
Understanding the Japanese spoken dialogue would definitely improve it too, since the speed of the words would clearly line up with something, and that's down to the player / not the game's fault, but still, it wouldn't make it good.

Despite its Kickstarter-era origins, it really feels like a Broken Sword game. The return to 2d also isn't paired with forced nostalgic fanservice stuff, at least not beyond the usual series links. And it's definitely up to the standards of the rest of the series.
The only thing I didn't like so much was that the UI / engine's a bit clunky and slow. It's not that it has technical problems like BS4, it just takes a bit of time to walk around and do things. Which deters you from trying actions that you're not confident will work, and that process leads to forgetting what you've already tried. Though it's probably no worse than the rest of the series for that.

Incredibly fun. Moving around is fast and chaotic, and it can be easy to mistakenly go in the wrong direction, but it's like Jet Set Radio in how managing to control that motion makes for some very rewarding and seemingly elegant gameplay, at least until you accidentally fall and die or something. There are no checkpoints besides reaching a boss, although levels are short. It's not too boring (though it can be frustrating) replaying levels after dying, particularly because of how fast paced everything is. The level layout's fairly repetitive among each stage anyway, so playing the same part again isn't all that different from just continuing, besides being further from the goal. That being said, instant death pits can be particularly annoying, and at some points it is easy to accidentally fall into one.
I'm not very familiar with other games with its general gameplay from that era, so I don't know how original it all is, but there are a lot of simple mechanics that work really well together. After killing an enemy, its body remains for a short time, with all the bodies disappearing after a certain amount of time has passed with no new kills (or when every enemy present has been killed, in which case an immensely satisfying animation is played). The number of corpses remaining dramatically affects how much damage you do, which is particularly important for bosses (due to their larger health bar), and because of this, boss fights can go by very quickly with a particularly good combo. Killing enemies is also rushed along by a gauge which fills by killing enemies, but gradually depletes over time and damages you if it becomes empty.
At odds with the main melee combat, a limited stock of shurikens is available too. These mostly just stun enemies, and are very much a secondary weapon, though they can also be used to break targets from a distance, or bring down flying enemies. They add an enjoyable amount of variety to the gameplay, but their lower power means that it's not too punishing to run out (and likewise, they make for a nice low stake reward to try and pick up).
The other form of attack is the very limited magic, which works a lot like in other Shinobi games. It's never necessary to save it for a specific point, and you can sometimes get an opportunity to collect another, so they work as an even better collectable item than the shurikens, and as a bit of a safety net in combat.
Movement is particularly ninja-like, with double jumping, running on walls, and dashing through the air (or on ground) allowing for complex manoeuvres. There's normally quite a bit of room for error in terms of platforming, so there isn't too much precision required. Enemies can be locked onto, and like in other games where that's possible, you can easily lock onto an enemy other than the one you expected and then get disoriented. No real way around that though, but it can happen often when there's a lot of enemies present.
Between each stage is a pre-rendered cutscene telling a not-very-interesting story, but there's a very pure early 2000's look to the cutscenes, and the dub is entertainingly dub-ish, so they're pleasant enough to watch (and can be skipped).
But yeah, probably the best Shinobi game, and Shinobi's one of the best series. So it's very good.

Very interesting. It would be a much lesser experience without anticipating the second playthrough having audio, so not advertising that was probably a mistake, but the format actually works quite well. On my first playthrough, I thought that it was either not making good use of the silence aspect, or it was abusing it so much that it didn't look that way, but I now think it was fine. There's a lot of things that are easy to miss, but none of them feel like cheap trickery.
In the silent playthrough, it feels less like a glimpse of what it's like to be a deaf person, and more what it's like to be deaf without the experiences of a deaf person (such as with how sign language isn't subtitled). As a result, I don't think it's true (as has been said) that it makes it look like deaf people don't understand what's going on (especially since the protagonist does appear to know what's going on), but rather that things are a lot more difficult.
The playthrough with audio is a lot more original than might be expected, though it's a pity that by the time you reach parts in the second playthrough, the questions you may have had in the first playthrough are very possibly forgotten. If it was a bit shorter, a third playthrough before the final version could've been interesting (to try and piece together things once more), but it's not really worthwhile.
It also looks very nice graphically, though the transitions between animations in gameplay are a lot less smooth than most cinematic games. The transitions between different types of cutscenes and gameplay are very smooth though.
Also the combat is fun, it's very linear and it fulfils the same kind of role as QTEs. I played it on the easy difficulty but died quite a few times, though it's very doable.
Also worth noting that if it wasn't for the audio stuff, it would be fairly normal. Some of the writing's quite cringe (and it's nice that the first playthrough spares you from that) and a lot of it's general lowbrow action film stuff. If it was only the version with audio, it'd be neither terrible nor worthwhile. But the fun comes from creating a mystery based on allowing the user to raise their own questions, with the answers clearly and fairly provided later.