VN Chaos;Head Review

Congratulations! You have reached a bad end...lol k wut.

And so It’s finally over.  Having completely finished the VN, I am duly impressed.  My thoughts after the jump.  Warning: SPOILERS ahoy.  *I have also included the beta patch at the end of the post.

In an effort to comfort myself from the fact that I’ve been too lazy to follow through and update this blog, I decided to post a bunch of pictures instead of a real review review of the VN Chaos;Head. I got this as it was released, but decided to wait, as my japanese skills are subpar and the technical terms in Chaos;Head would own me. Having finally found the beta translation patch by lurking around various forums, I sat down and played it through. As stated above, I was duly impressed.

However, the game was a very bumpy ride.  In all honesty, there were a lot of things that could have been better.  I felt that the VN had an identity crisis.  I expected a game simliar to a cross of Ever 17 and Higurashi and Mai-Hime.  As far as genre goes, it is supposed to be a physiological/sci-fi mystery thriller.    Technically it is, however, as I was playing through the VN, there were a lot of other elements thrown in that made it strange.  I feel Chaos;Head is one of those things that is better as a sum of its parts.  Or maybe the trailer was so misleading that I was shocked and disappointed.

I’ll start with a roster of the characters and a brief synopsis of the story.

From left to right: Sena, Kozue, Nanami, Takumi, Rimi, Ayase, Yua

Takumi Nishijō

The main protagonist of the story.  A hikkikomori otaku whose many delusions drive the game.  He looks down on mostly everyone he sees, and is an ass to everyone he knows.  I think he ranks first among the most pathetic, annoying male leads ever conceived, including all the ones from harems.  That reveals a lot.  He combines all of the negative aspects of a hikkikomori, otaku, nerd, pervert, etc.  Prerequisite pathetic male lead.

Nanami Nishijō

The sister of said protagonist.  She puts up a front, but she actually cares deeply for her brother.  Prerequisite younger sister type.

Rimi Sakihata

The main heroine of the story, she has a bright and cheerful personality.  She is one of the few friends that can stand Takumi Takumi has. Prerequisite Child hood friend type.

Sena Aoi

Bad ass girl who is often seen walking around the city holding a sword.  She seems to have all the facts, with the exception of those surronding Takumi.  Prerequisite Tsundere type.

Yua Kusunoki

Discovered stalking Takumi early on, she is also heavily into anime.  She has a graceful and mostly gentle personality.  Prerequisite Elder sister type.

Kozue Orihara

A transfer student who appears later on in the story, she has a very shy personality.  Simliar to Takumi, she has trouble expressing herself to others.  Prerequisite Loli type.

Ayase Kishimoto

A singer for an indies rock band Phantasm, she has a quiet personality.     Prerequisite quiet brooding type.

As far as the story set up goes, you start out as Takumi being the human failure that he is.  Being introduced to his lifestyle, which consists of MMO’s, anime, and eroge.  He lives in a metal storage unit on top of an old apartment building in Shibuya.  He attends Suimei Academy only when absolutely necessary.  His sole reason for existence and desire in life is Seira-tan, an anime character.

Seira in one of Takumi's many fantasies

A pretty normal life, until he is introduced to some guro images depicting a murder in an online chat room by “shogun”, along with the phrase, ” Whose eyes are those eyes”.  Disturbed, the next day he then stumbles upon a blood covered Rimi at murder scene that depicts the guro images that “shogun” showed him.  He realizes later that he witnessed a crime that is connected to the New Gen cases, a strange set of serial murders.  Takumi finds himself caught in the ever mysterious New Gen cases that seems to be targeting him in some way.  The plot thickens as strange girls randomly involve themselves in his life, each of whom has a connection to the new gen incidents.  As Takumi gets himself further involved in the new gen cases, he must separate the delusions from reality to find his way out of the conspiracy, all the while having his mental stability break down.

What sets this VN apart is the unique presentation.  While using a first person perspective is standard, the plot is presented in a realistic way.  Takumi, being the loser that he is, is unable to hold a normal conversation with others, not even with his own sister.  Because of this, a lot of the setup and story is presented in Takumi’s room, which I felt was realistic.

The creators even gave a nod to the otakus by adding in various references that we would be sure to recognize.  Like so.

I squelled like a little girl when I saw these figures.

Even as the plot thickens with additional new gen incidents, Takumi utilizes chat rooms, forums, and teh internet to do his own research.  The enjoyment factor only rose after seeing sites such as Taboo!, Mew Tube, @ chan.

The way the physiological thriller aspect was presented was done well.  All of the new gen cases could get pretty graphic.

It only gets worse.

Some parts were just brilliant, such as the suspense in this scene.

Innocent enough. You've got mail!

At this point, I so did not want to continue.

The phrase,”Whose eyes are those eyes” is a common and recurring theme.  Each of the cases was in some way tied to it.  In fact, this phrase was used so often, it was one of the things that pushed Takumi to near insanity.  Seeing it always gave me the willies.

Another unique presentation was the inclusion of the delusional system.  Instead of presenting you with choices that leads you down different paths, the choices are instead presented through 3 delusional “triggers”.   Each can mirror Takumi’s state of mind.  The choices you choose determines what delusions Takumi can have.  The green one is a stable and positive delusion, usually leading to a humourous or ecchi scene.

The red one is an unstable delusion, and usually leads to something gory.

The third one enables you to skip both delusions.

Nitroplus did a top notch production.  The visuals and character designs are beautiful.  As seen from the above pictures, nitroplus integrates the 3d CG and the 2d really well.  The unusal aspect is that the character’s mouths move when they speak.  Only a couple VNs come to mind(Remember 11), which integrate this feature.  My only complaint here is that some of the background character’s 3d CGs look really subpar.

Rather they used 2d for this.

The VN is also fully voiced, even to the point where the background noise is realistic and decent.  The background chatter in the classroom, the shouts from a crowd, the hum from a computer all add to the realism.  The music, on the other hand, does what it sets out to accomplish.  The only music of note is the insert songs.  The BGM is nothing compared to something like Clannad.

Even the presentation for the menus are top notch.  A neat touch that Nitroplus included was the Extras menu. A very nice touch indeed.

I love little things like this.  It shows how much the producers care about their work.

My biggest disappointment with this VN involves both the delusional system of gameplay and the story itself.  There are only 3 routes and endings, the AA route (good ending), A route (bad ending), and B route (bad ending).  Route AA and A are identical.  The only difference is that AA adds an extra scene at the end.  There are no flags to trigger these endings.  Both  routes are achieved by either answering all of the yes/no questions at the end correctly or incorrectly.  Route B is similiar, however this route explores the new gen cases and the common phrase,”Whose eyes are those eyes” in more detail.  There are several flags that you must trigger to achieve this ending.  This makes the replay value very short.  There are no separate routes for each heroine, etc.  It is basically 1 route with one branching off(B route), and 2 seperate endings(A and AA routes).  Having no knowledge that the routes were so similar, I expected my choices through the delusional system to actually have an effect on the story.  I was thoroughly disappointed when this wasn’t the case.

Another disappointment was the story itself.  Taken as a psychological mystery, it excels.  However, the cross genre elements they tried to put in is made of phails.  They tried to put in action and battles akin to something from Fate Stay Night.  Or so I expected.  That’s what the Di-swords are for right?  No such luck.  In fact, out of all 6 heroines with Di-swords, only 2 ever get really used.  This immediately cheapens the fact that there are Di-swords.  What purpose did they serve other than eyecandy?

Sena is the only one who used her Di-sword with any form of frequency.

Another gripe I have is the ending.  After all the tears, sweat, epic buildup, and work to reach the ending, it feels hollow.  Tacked on.  No form of epilogue whatsoever.  Characters other than Takumi and Rimi gets shafted in terms of story at the end.

I am the bone of my sword....So as I pray, Chaos;Head.

All in all, I would rank this VN in my top 10 purely from the unique and spectacular presentation.  Chaos;Head deviated quite far from the norm of the VN world.  It had its ups and downs, however it should definately make its way on the to play list of every VN fan.  If you do plan to play, ignore and forget anything you saw/read before hand and dive in.  It’s an experience you won’t regret.

Nanami being complete Moe

Better as a sum of its parts indeed.

*edit

You can get the patch here.  However, keep in mind that this is the beta patch.  So expect a lot of errors, untranslated text, etc to go with it.  I don’t believe that there is an official patch out yet.  You can check the progress on the official patch here.