428: Shibuya Scramble

Finally got 100% achievements, so here's my review. Overall, this is an incredibly solid text-based game with a surprisingly deep level of replayability. The gameplay design is genuinely impressive — even by today's standards, the mechanics still hold up extremely well. The story is tightly constructed, with one twist after another, and the pacing keeps you hooked from start to finish. The plot twists are also genuinely unexpected: [spoiler]Who would've guessed that Canaan was actually an impostor, and that she was Alphard all along? [/spoiler] That being said, the biggest flaw is the character writing. A lot of the characters feel very formulaic and stereotypically "anime". This issue doesn't hurt the main story too much, but the extra Canaan anime-style chapters were honestly painful to sit through. The lack of realism was extremely noticeable — it felt like something written by people with zero real-world experience who had never left their own bubble. The writing was so awkward and disconnected from reality that it became unintentionally hilarious. The fact that the production team even hired voice actors specifically for this made the whole thing even more embarrassing. The Canaan chapter is the only part of the entire game where the flaws become impossible to ignore. If you're not into Japanese anime-style storytelling and you're not here for the 100% completion grind, I would recommend skipping the Canaan chapter, because it may give you a pretty rough experience. Aside from that, the problems in the other chapters are mostly minor. The game has its flaws, but they are absolutely outweighed by everything it does well. Overall, a fantastic experience that still holds up today.

After what felt like way more than 30 hours, I finally reached the normal ending of 428: Shibuya Scramble. Despite my few grievances with certain parts of the game, I am still happy to call 428: Shibuya Scramble a masterpiece. After all, it's no small feat to seamlessly intertwine so many parallel stories, each with their own captivating plots and protagonists blended with a veritable onslaught of emotional set pieces and flawless humour. From start to finish, the story was exceptional. The scenario and writing deserve equal praise. I was constantly being fed small pieces of information, forming my own theories, doing my own investigative work (so to speak), and absolutely revelling in the roller coaster of emotions brought forth by the bombshell of a plot and excellent delivery of dramatic moments, twists, and other important story beats. The gameplay, while basic, cannot really be compared to a traditional visual novel. It's the most interactive visual novel I have ever played, at the very least requiring the use of every single face button, and it really forces you to get your thinking cap on at times. For most of the game, the various hints do a good job of helping you determine the right path forwards, but sometimes the very gameplay systems you use to advance can lull you into a false sense of progression. The main example would be a KEEP OUT concealing nothing but a bad ending. Unsurprisingly, my favourite character pairings were Kajiwara with Osawa, and Yanagishita with Minorikawa. Their constant comedic scuffles were the product of what I can only describe as perfect humour, at least in my opinion. Never before has a game made me laugh hysterically quite like this one. This story could have been portrayed in an anime style, but actually the live action cinematography ended up being one of this game's biggest strengths. By virtue of being heavily stylised, all anime is purely fictional to a certain extent. You often require suspension of disbelief when things start getting crazy. Having human actors in a live action visual novel set in modern day Japan with accurate and realistic terminology central to the story's various storylines makes everything so much more believable. As someone who meddles in the realm of viruses for a living, the story has my seal of approval on that front. Now, I can get to discussing the ending. Truth be told, nothing in this game can really be considered difficult. It's all a matter of trial and error and paying attention to hints whether they're delivered explicitly through bad endings or more subtly through character dialogue. That being said, I genuinely got stuck at one point in the final time block because the game took advantage of my familiarity with the game systems and decided to throw a spanner in the works. The game systems sort of lose their meaning near the end of the game, being used a lot more brazenly to force a specific arrangement of choices in order to arrive at the conclusion. My bigger issue with the ending, albeit still not game ruining in the slightest, is the confusing momentum presented by the final time block. Just when all the stars have aligned in your head and you can smell the end of the story, is where the aforementioned inconsistencies pop up. Truth be told, I just didn't enjoy having to endure so much trial and error so close to the end. The amount of back and forth gets a bit fatiguing, and wrong choices lose the impact they had earlier in the game where you genuinely don't know the best way to advance. Imagine someone asks you what your favourite flavour of ice cream is, but instead of giving them a straight answer you respond with the name of an Italian gelateria and the flavour's position in their countertop display. Gameplay aside, the end of the story had a satisfying yet expected twist given my previous knowledge of Canaan. If the anime was anything remotely close to the quality of 428: Shibuya Scramble, it would be sensational. But it isn't.

I chose to get all the bad endings for every hour as I went along. That was probably the better choice, because I feel like getting all these joke endings after getting the true ending would be really annoying. It was fun but it's not that deep or anything.