LogFAQs > #951424818

#5 - Steins;Gate (Vita, 2015)

This is the choice of Steins Gate.

Steins;Gate is the perfect example of games that I somehow end up impulse buying that end up being the best games I have ever purchased (there's one more of those on this list up ahead.) In 2016, I was unemployed for the entire year so I had a good look at many video games during this period, and I also had a trophy streak going on. Steins;Gate happened to be a good candidate for the daily streak with a number of random trophies like "change phone ringtone" and stuff, so I used it like this for about a week, saying that I would probably go back to it later and see how the game actually was.

Ended up reading the entire visual novel in less than a week.

Steins;Gate's main character is Rintaro Okabe, a self proclaimed mad scientist who is the head of the Future Gadget Laboratory, where he makes inventions that are pretty useless in general. Through sheer circumstance, one of these inventions is found to be able to send messages back in time, effectively changing the present and future by jumping to another worldline. Unlike most visual novel protagonists, Okabe isn't a stupid bland dude you can use as a self-insert; he's a fully developed character from the get go and the VN honestly would not work as well without his personality.

In my eyes, after reading through the game multiple times, I think Steins;Gate is the perfect example for someone trying to get into visual novels having already tried the pseudo ones such as Zero Escape and Phoenix Wright games. It hooks you in from the get-go with a very interesting prologue, and though some of the early chapters can be rather long, there is a certain point where there's no way you're putting it down until you see the end. When I said I read through the entire thing in a week, the last four chapters were done in a day. There simply was no reason for me to put my Vita down to stop, and I even had it in the charger during this time so I could read without waiting.

I've bought every SciAdv title since reading through this one, and Steins;Gate 0 made it on this list while Chaos;Child slightly missed it. Unfortunately, I'm still reading through Robotics;Notes as it also suffers from the "interesting hook but slow start" that all Science Adventure games seem to have. I'm not sure that Mages and 5pb will ever be able to top this game's quality ever, in any of their releases. They're certainly not giving up, as there's another Steins title in development and I'll definitely pick it up if it ever gets localized over here.

I own both the spinoffs, Darling of Loving Vows and Linear Bound Phenogram but for some reason have not started either of them. I feel that reading 0 was probably necessary as it expanded the plot, but I feel like the story of Steins;Gate is perfect as it is, and needs no changes. It was a very special visual novel from beginning to end, and deserves all the praise it gets.

El Psy Kongroo

Soundtrack Links
Sky Clad Observer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2LDC0sTsEQ

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