428: Shibuya Scramble

One of the best visual novels I've played... err.. or rather read, and I remember I've played many. It has everything - good drama, pacing, twists, characters, photo visuals, and music. I'll start with some negatives - the text skip is slow if you want to advance to already read texts, and you can only jump forward to the (save) checkpoints that happen after 5-6 pages of texts (depending on scenario). You play from the POV of different protagonists to advance the story, and the game's system of jumping from one protag's storyline to another can become confusing and jarring the further you progress, especially towards the end. This forces you to read repeated dialogues/texts, but from other protag's POV. This made up a decent chunk of hours I spent in the game. Other than this, I have no other issue to point out. Moving to positives, I'll start with the characters - I think they are all cool and memorable in their own way, not a single character or side character.. or even extras are forgetful. Storyline is cool, and is supported by static photographs (that pan, zoom in/out etc., and other effects/animations, there are FMVs as well but they are short and reserved for main plot happenings). The plot has its ups and downs, some chapters may bore you but I think its subjective. Overall, I don't wanna spoil the plot or chapters at all unlike some other reviews here. It's a good VN, I think its worth the purchase.

Very unlike any visual novel I've ever played, but also one of the very best! Tremendous character writing, story telling and genuine wit awaits, if you can deal with a somewhat archaic game structure, which requires you to put up with a large amount of replaying the same scenes over and over to get everything. Overall, very much worth it though IMHO.

theres so many things i love about the game, wow one of the best spike chunsoft games one of my favorite vn's ive ever played