izigame.me

TL;DR: Not as good as Steins;Gate/0, but nothing ever really will be.
Very good game, you should play it if you like VNs and have at least watched the Steins;Gate anime. You'd probably be a little lost without at least that much foreknowledge.
No spoilers in this review.
First, I'll say that I really enjoyed this experience. I am a huge SciADV fan and have been for almost a decade. It's a series very close to my heart and as such some of my opinions will be skewed by this fact, some skewed overly positive and some skewed overly negatively.
The things I liked:
- The characters are really good. There's a lot of charm in the personification of the cast through their voices, art, and animations throughout the VN. Everyone has a role to play and none of the characters feel like they're stepping on the toes of the others through their part of the plot. I personally got attached and invested in almost every recurring character.
- The worldbuilding is campy, but in a charming way. The technology on display, the input methods the characters use to interface with said technology, and a lot of the "I am a hacker therefore I can hack into things easily" trope is very kitschy but its unapologetic representation kind of makes it overflow into being cool.
- The main gameplay is conceptually very solid and engaging.
- The plotline of the adventure is engaging, with earned high-stakes and some incredibly memorable moments. While not playing the game (usually between chapters), I was inspired to think and ponder ideas/story beats presented in the plot, which good VNs should always strive to achieve.
- The art is gorgeous. There are some things that could be polished. One of the earlier-appearing militarized characters has his mouth animation looking quite...unfortunately unpolished. But besides those hiccups, I really love the art style they went with here even though it doesn't hold a candle of the non-Elite S;G art in my opinion. Some scenes are illustrated in manga panel style and I wish there were more of these, as they are a special treat whenever they come up.
- The music is really good and sets the tone very well. While not quite as striking as Steins;Gate music, it is easily some of the best in its genre and I plan to enjoy the soundtrack even after finishing the game.
The things I didn't like:
- Not enough breathing room between major story plots beats. There is an immense amount of story whiplash in this game. There will be a scene with a huge revelation or event, and the game just kind of moves on and drags you with it. Particular moments have characters in peril that don't really give you enough time to let it linger on your tongue.
This problem also extends to lore implications, as there will be info dumps that don't give the player time to really let things sink in. I won't go into detail in the interest of keeping it spoiler-free but there were several times I had to open the log and reread conversations a few times because it felt like enormous exposition was given in such a quick and rapid-fire way.
- While conceptually cool, the main game mechanic is very obtuse to use naturally. You basically need a guide if you want to see every CG and optional scene. S;G struggles with this too, but a lot of its choices come from your cell phone literally ringing or pinging you for attention.
- There are a lot of times where the log feature (pretty standard in visual novels) just straight up does not work. You can hit the button and it beeps at you as if to tell you "yep, button received" and it just does not give you a log of what you just read. This is very frustrating. This was likely done because of the way they tried to make the text that the player sees be in-universe in a way, but I don't think that concept was worth sacrificing the ability to reread dialogue that just happened.
The things I'm not stating an opinion on, but just providing commentary:
I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. As a standalone end to THIS TITLE, it's satisfying and a good way to cap off the adventure. But this game was pitched as the pinnacle of what SciADV was building to and I don't see it that way at all.
On the wider SciADV community you'll find a lot of people talking about how this game changes/recontextualizes/ruins the entire series and I don't agree. There's evidence in the text to suggest that this is the case, but also enough evidence to suggest that it isn't. There are a number of theoretical flame wars and arguments one could make to argue one perspective or another but I don't think we'll really know until the eventual release of Steins;??? (or, at the very least, Steins;Gate Reboot in 2025). That being the case, this game can't really be what the whole series was building to, then.
For now, I'll say that it's my opinion that while the ending has huge implications it doesn't have the immense collateral effect that some people insist it does.