"A person will experiences two deaths. The first is when a soul leaves their body. And the second is when the memories of that person fade from everyone's hearts."
- Sayoko Robbins

"Because you remember her, my mom lives on. And thanks to that, I got to see her."
- Ashley Robbins

Been thinking a lot about remakes. What is the value of a remake? What is lost in returning to an older work to "fix" things? All these meta-commentaries and adaptations are interesting in theory, but why is it so hard to simply release the old games?

Another Code is a messy example in that so much of its foundation is built on hardware that no longer exists. Cing used every aspect of the DS and the Wii to build its narratives and these clever methods of interaction are a crucial beating heart. Losing a majority of that puzzle interaction in the Recollection's format does... hurt. But there's still so much love here that its a compromise I understand.

The game undeniably provides two key features: ease and access. The game is easier to navigate, dialogue easier to skip through, backtracking and surplus content is snipped off for a more pleasant experience. Running around the mansion in Two Memories is really fun! The sensation of interacting with a tiny video game map to unravel, rather than an exhausting open world, feels like something that's been lost in a lot of modern game design. It felt amazing to return to it and even more amazing that its so easy to acquire this game. People can play and experience these games in one complete package. It'd certainly wish people to at least seek out emulators, but I'm choosing to be happy for the people experiencing this narrative for the first time.

But I think what really won me over on this game was the director's cut feel of it. Head Writer Rika Suzuki and Director Taisuke Kanasaki returned for Recollection and you can feel that sense of time permeate their approach to this game, especially in the Journey Into Lost Memories section. One character in the Wii game was a character I often found frustrating and boring to engage with. Recollection completely changes the final climax of the story and alters his journey into something full of tragedy, misunderstanding, and existentialism. It ties up loose ends and closes the book on a series that never continued. It says goodbye, but with peace and joy rather than misery.

In 2022, Rika Suzuki became an honorary member of the Game Preservation Society. Her interview after Cing's closure can be found here. Cing's closure was the first time I understood as a child that a company closing meant something could be lost that wouldn't be filled. That something would change. And from there, an understanding that when an uncaring company fires its workers, its throwing away the talents and efforts of so many dedicated people. That lesson influences how I think about... a lot of things into the present.

Games are built through the hard-work and care of many different individuals we will never know. Their names passing us by on a credits screen symbolizes days and weeks and months of work. I can feel the love pouring from the screen. I can feel the passion for creativity and joy. If you don't feel it for this game, and I would never demand that you have to, feel that passion in your own favorite games. Find a favorite moment or scene or piece of art and look up who was in charge of art design or script or lighting or any piece of visual scenery that you adored. Someone made that. Remember them, if just for a little while. And if you don't want to do that for games, do that for your fridge, your coat, your wallet. Someone made that. We're all connected by work we'll never see. Remember them.

Another Code helped teach me that a decade ago and its still reminding me that now.

Chaos;Child is a basically perfect mix of murder mystery, psychological drama, fun Sci-fi magic, and likable characters. I was honestly floored that outside maybe the first several hours, the visual novel was consistently quite interesting or entertaining.

Country to popular belief from the hardcore Sci;Adv fanboys, you do NOT need to read other Science;Adventure visual novels first. In fact, I think Chaos;Child is one of the better ones to start off with since it has a good balance of mixing slice of Life character development as well as introducing mystery plot elements. It can help you find out if you like the ideas of Sci;Adv before going into others. But if you’re sure you wanna read all the Sci;Adv VNs, then find one of those online guides to read from Chaos;Head Noah up to Anonymous;Code.

Many of the Science;Adventure series usually have like 1-3 good characters and the rest are boring, annoying, or nowhere near fleshed out as they should be. In my opinion I think all the major characters of Chaos;Child all eventually get enough depth to stick out. Sure there are still some that probably could have used a little more love like Uki, Hana, and Mio but even I thought they had just enough for me to have something of an emotional connection to them, which I can't say for 90% of the cast of Steins;Gate or Chaos;Head.

As said earlier, the mystery stuff is basically paced almost perfectly. You have a murder mystery scenario within the first chapter and every single chapter has some really interesting reveal, so you're never left hanging. This also extends to the heroine routes when you get on them.

While this visual novel has a lot of sci-fi magic that could’ve lead to dumb deus ex machinas, Chaos;Child does a surprisingly good job having a good balance of hopeful/positive twists but also not reversing any big negative twist (like KEY). In fact, you can make the argument that sometimes the way some routes end are probably a little too edgy at times. But once again I think Chaos;Child has a good balance of having hopeful things happen and negative things happen where the characters just have to live with the consequences.

Chaos;Child also has a very consistent theme of “be careful what you wish for”. It’s a theme I find is only used in certain occasion in other media. I like how this theme applies to many characters and works great with how the sci-fi magic works in Chaos;Child.

The story structure is definitely very weird and a carryover from Chaos;head. The vast majority of the story is in the common route which you are forced onto on your first read through. I could see how this could bother some people since the common route on its own could be somewhere between 20 to 40 hours depending on your reading speed since it has 11 chapters of variable lengths. However, I'm glad this visual novel at least did something relatively different because the common route is very much its own complete story with a very definitive end. And honestly, if the story ended there, it could have been a great story on its own.

I generally have positive things to say about every heroine route + true route. They are all on the short side being somewhere between two to five hours depending on your reading speed. They basically feel more like giving context to certain characters and world building that the common route couldn't quite tackle. I thought this route aspect worked surprisingly well simultaneously giving the other main heroines a different role while not taking away from the main story and especially the true route twists. A minor nitpick is I wish more of the side heroine twists were integrated in the main story.

However, one thing I don't have positive things to say about is the delusion choice system, another carryover from the spiritual prequel Chaos;Head. In Chaos;Head, the delusion trigger system made more sense for the main character as he was exceptionally paranoid. In Chaos;Child, the delusion trigger works exactly the same where you can choose positive or negative delusions based on certain slice of life scenarios. Unfortunately, all these just feel like dumb tacked-on anime fan service scenes. Since these all happen in the main character Takuru’s head, they can range from goofy references to other media, typical horny male fantasizing over females, or just super random mundane things. What doesn't help is that you have to watch a certain amount of positive or negative delusions to get onto the heroine routes. Thankfully, if you really don't like these scenes, you could probably just hold the Skip button during the scenes you don't like because none of them are plot relevant.

Thankfully the delusion trigger aspect is the only real flaw I have with Chaos;Child besides the occasional slow pacing issue which is just a common thing with visual novels in general.

The “best for last” aspect I want to talk about is the characters and as I basically implied earlier, they are what help carry this visual novel to now one of my new favorites.

Admittedly, almost none of them are in the running for my favorite character or anything. In fact, you could make the argument that a few of them are purposely unlikable at times, including our main character Takuru. Some people may be put off by him because of how low-key arrogant he is despite clearly being socially awkward. But he gets a surprising amount of depth, and while his development wasn't always great, the way he turned out by the end was satisfying.

All the major heroines are decently likable: Nono being an overprotective mom but for good reason, Hinae being a troll who has clear trust issues, Hana having a mystery of why she never talks, Uki’s desire to always want to be helpful to people, and even Mio who starts off as a bitch but gets more tolerable over time.

However, the true star of the show is easily Serika and is now in the running for one of my favorite visual novel heroines. I really like her base personality of just being a goofy ditzy weirdo. In every single scene she's in, she provides some fun commentary, jokes, or super interesting dialogue.. As you get farther in the game, she shows a lot more depth than you realize and the fact that they don't sugarcoat things about certain aspects about her was part of why I really like her even if she does some things that aren't really “waifu-like". But that's fine, not every visual novel girl has to specifically be a waifu target, we got plenty of childhood friend characters in weeb media.

The more I think about it, the more that chaos child was basically the perfect storm of what I want in a plot-heavy mystery focused visual novel. It’s just consistently entertaining and interesting, and despite all the sci-fi magic stuff and things getting a bit edgy at times, everything either has a proper explanation or has really good character growth and depth that generally made the storytelling understandable.

I'm still debating whether to give this a 9 or 10, but when I have almost nothing but positive things to say, I think that's a good sign that this is now one of my favorite visual novels.

I heavily recommend Chaos;Child if you want a mystery and/or psychological story and don't mind some sci-fi magic explanations.

After catching up to all the Niigo focused event stories, including the ones only released in the JP version so far, I can pretty confidently confess my boundless love towards this game through a nonsensical stream of random thoughts.

It was hard to predict that a "funny" Vocaloid rhythm gacha game would be featuring some of my all-time favorite characters and a narrative I could heavily resonate with but now that I actually gave the story a chance, I can't deny what happened ; I just feel like my past me was completely and utterly blind.

While I've only started getting into the story 2 weeks ago, I was already playing the game 1.5 years ago after falling in love with Kanade's cover of Inochi ni Kirawarete iru. but despite loving the songs and the gameplay, I still eventually fell off after a few months and dropped it alongside my other gacha games because keeping up with those is often a pain and I had no real emotional attachment to the characters back then.

I never really bothered trying out the story considering the moonrunes and I simply didn't have any interest in it after my experiences with Love Live SIF, SIFAS and Bandori's stories. Being a huge fan of Love Live didn't prevent me from finding the few parts I've read mind-numbingly boring to a point where it just feels like I'm wasting time more than anything else ; liking the characters themselves a lot didn't help in the slightest.

25-ji, Nightcord de. (Niigo) was already the group I was the most interested in among the five featured in the game but that interest was very superficial ; I just liked their songs a lot and their character design was much more appealing to me than the rest of the characters. I didn't really feel like learning more about them since my impressions of them were limited to "very edgy idols" based on the imagery I've seen both in-game and in fanarts.

Thankfully, these impressions were way off the mark since the world isn't that cruel but it took me way too much time to realize that... can't help but feel endless pain and shame about how I didn't figure out that Nightcord was supposed to be a Discord knock-off either...

Niigo isn't a group of overly edgy idols, they're just your very average teenagers that log on Discord VC at 1 AM to work on Vocaloid songs and surprisingly they never really sing and dance in the story itself (glad that doesn't stop their VAs from constantly putting out bangers whenever they're singing for covers or songs specifically commissioned for event stories).
It's a much more interesting and unique approach to take story-wise for a music-themed narrative instead of just going for yet another middling idol plot but this time, it would be an idol story tainted by teen angst in its most ridiculous and edgiest form and senseless drama !

Niigo's story avoids all the pitfalls this kind of story could normally stumble into.
There are no over the top antagonists since all the characters always act in a fairly realistic way based on their personalities and their past experiences, as expected of normal human beings...
Can't find any dumb conflicts, they're all ones that you could easily find anywhere and personally live through, which makes the girls easy to empathize with and make their struggles feel more authentic.

There's no real stagnation despite it being more profitable if they drag out the stories to make more money off the characters with the gacha, there's close to no filler, every event story feels like an important experience for them and lets the reader understand the characters more ; the progress can be slow and some of the events feel very "ordinary" but I'd argue that it's one of the biggest strengths of this story there.

There's simply no miracle solution to their problems, they're issues you need to deal with slowly over time instead of acting reckless and making them worse or suddenly making them disappear with an unbelievable deus ex machina coming out of nowhere which would make their problems seem very dumb and wouldn't resolve them forever. The payoffs feel genuinely earned and some of the girls' smiles feel like they're worth celebrating and throwing a huge party for.

I've gotten emotional so many times while reading through all the stories and it's the game that actually made me love Auto speed just to appreciate how well their VAs managed to convey the characters' strongest emotions so well ; it's helped by beautiful event BGMs and very detailed animation for their facial expressions.

Even if it's sometimes hard to view this as just a story considering how emotionally invested I'm into their story with me just wanting to see these girls happy, there's been a lot of well-done foreshadowing that makes me very confident that the writers already know where they're going with this and I find it hard to believe that they'd fumble hard any time soon.

All the Niigo event stories I've read were constantly great, even the ones where they interact with characters from other units for which I don't care as much, the story always keeps a certain balance to keep the player's emotions from going solely one way and the constant variety helps to keep their attention up at all times. It's been fairly easy to draw parallels with my own life with how painfully relatable some of these characters are and honestly, I've been pretty inspired by how they managed to tackle their own problems (in other words, Ena Shinonome is legendary).

It's also hard not to appreciate how much the story recognizes music's value as something that can genuinely impact people's lives for the better without outright resolving all their issues just by listening to it.

I've always been trying to find this kind of music-themed narrative with this much character focus, endearing characters and fun banter, ordinary problems that are portrayed in a compelling, easy to empathize and relatable way and I've found something kinda similar to that in a visual novel but the music featured there was kinda bad/bland... The complete opposite of Niigo' songs.

I get endless satisfaction and catharsis from seeing these girls constantly evolve while complementing and bring each other up but I still can't get enough of it... Thankfully I still have a lot of card stories and area conversations to go through before I completely run out of content.

It's actually so bizarre to see that these writers actually know what they're working with and give it the proper treatment it deserves, I'm genuinely just so damn excited to see how they'll continue this and eventually wrap up all the girls' character arcs...

Obviously also highly anticipating any new songs of theirs, especially commissioned songs because the ones specially made for the event stories often are just plain spectacular.
Kanade Tomosu Sora is some of the most beautiful music I've ever listened to and it's heavily helped by its equally beautiful 2DMV. It fits Niigo so perfectly like most of their other commissioned songs, with the lyrics directly referencing what the girls are going through and the event it was made for. The song quite literally feels like Kanade's song.
Their voices were already something special in the stories but I don't think I can praise their vocals enough because even when I don't like the instrumentals, their voices can still heavily carry the song to make me like it anyway.
Infinitely Gray is probably their most impactful song as far as I'm concerned, really feels like Niigo members (especially Ena) are screaming their emotions out but it's pleasant instead of being a painful cacophony ; just listening to it gives me catharsis again while thinking about the event it's featured in.

Outside of Niigo, I can't say I'm as enthusiastic about the rest of the game even though I still love the rhythm gameplay with how fun and creative some charts can be. The song selection is wonderful to me, all units have multiple standout commissioned songs and covers of Vocaloid songs I'm familiar with and already fond of.

The gacha rates are awful if you're not a lucksack and while the art is consistently beautiful even for low rarity cards, it sucks to be locked off the best-looking cards with how frequent limited banners are and the fact that the game isn't exactly that generous with the gacha currency it gives.
At least, it's not especially hard to get 4*s in general since the game does give free pulls and pity too, it's just a lot harder to get the ones you care about in my experience.

I've pretty much only focused on Niigo's story but I've read some of the other groups' main stories (well, they're just introductions tbh) and they're not as interesting as what I've read from Niigo. The characters there are still easy to like and care about and they're also going through their own problems (angst isn't reserved to Niigo) but I have a harder time getting invested into them and their relationships even though I loved the interactions they had with Niigo members in some event stories.
I'll probably have to try reading more but it's hard to imagine how it could top Niigo' story ; hoping I'll somehow get proven wrong but I heavily doubt it considering how much Niigo means to me now.

Anyway, all of this just to say that I owe Niigo everything and that they're now living in my head rent-free alongside Yonagi and Van Arkride...