Are you familiar with other games by Kotaro Uchikoshi, scenario writer of this, the Nonary Games, and various other notable visual novel/puzzle games? If so, yeah, it’s exactly one of his games and probably what you want. It’s a tad linear but otherwise might be his best work – with the caveat that my favorite of his games before now was Zero Time Dilemma. Go play it, you won’t be disappointed.
Alright, now the nerds have gone to pick it up, hello everyone else. How to review a story-heavy, choice-light visual novel for those who may never have picked one up before? A decent question, so perhaps I’ll start with this. There is a central dichotomy to almost everything Uchikoshi writes – and shared by many of his contemporaries, such as Danganronpa’s Kazutaka Kodaka, Nier’s Yoko Taro, and Death Stranding’s Hideo Kojima.
They all have such beautiful stories to tell. Ones of hope, defeat, trauma, consequence, realistic depictions of grief, the dangers of fundamentalism, and much more. They’re also all terminally, indescribably horny. It is now so common in so many works to come out of Japan that it’s partly expected, often desired, and the communities that grow around them expect it. As your average bisexual man leaning perhaps slightly prudish, I find it some mix of entertaining, amusing, and off-putting, depending on the context.
The same is true for what are often one-dimensional character intros or traits that are designed to provide instant understanding or knowledge of a member of the cast to be expanded upon later. These often fail to make me actually like them. One of Nirvana’s first character intros is Lien, who runs into a scene and declares his undying love for a woman with no interest in him, then proceeds to harass her for the next couple of hours.
He ends up being one of the most lovable, real characters with an excellent arc (as does his unwilling muse), but the game has zero interest in critiquing the weird, obsessive nature of his initial relationship. It wasn’t very bothered about it as a topic in the original game either, or the continuation of those stories in this sequel, where they appear.
Which is all to say that’s about everything I have to complain about. Nirvana Initiative is truly a triumph of storytelling and puzzle/investigation gameplay. It’s a game given the time and room it needs to set a tale up properly and provide an incredible set of payoffs that will keep you guessing, but enjoying every minute of it, to the very end.
Perhaps most surprising are the actual gameplay portions of that journey. I went in expecting a well-written game with some combination of ridiculous, over-the-top, tear-jerking emotional moments. I am far more impressed by the innovations made to the simple investigation formulas of the original AI: the Somnium Files, and even the complexity and integration of some quick-time events. This is particularly true when you consider The Quarry as the most recent triple-A and western effort to do something similar.
It’s clear that a lot of time went into improving and working on the dreamscape exploration that debuted in AI. The first game had high moment-to-moment variation with many options on how to use each and every item in every space – this cuts back on that in favor of making each scenario unique, with its own mechanics, goals, and quirks. This feels more akin to earlier Uchikoshi games, where individual puzzles would have their own themes.
This gives a much more varied journey, accompanied by far more interactive elements outside of the game’s namesake sequences. These are more-involved conversations with more options to explore, plus new sequences examining and then re-enacting crime scenes or other events. Don’t get it twisted, this is still a game where every so often you’ll be settling in for an hour of reading dialogue, analyzing locations, and moving between locations. However, there will always be something new to do when the interaction does roll around.
The writing has also improved significantly. AI had an off-beat comedy to it that didn’t always land, and the sequel is vastly funnier and smarter, from lines of dialogue to visual gags. When it isn’t trying to make you laugh it does a much better job of fleshing characters out quickly into people you care about and speeding them along into the overarching plot and its many sub-threads. It tugs at heartstrings as effectively as it sets up suspenseful showdowns or pays off action sequences.
The overall plot is a slow-burn that offers a lot more questions than it does answers for a long, long time. At a certain point in the game I was absolutely positive that I had either critically misunderstood something or the writing team had messed up in the biggest possible way – or, well, it could just be brilliant and have a great twist. It was, thankfully, the latter.
There’s also quite a lot of what you might call bonus content – little bits and pieces to keep you entertained with surprises. There’s a tonne of little collectibles to find, secrets to discover with attached achievements, every time you go back to the menu there’s a chance your AI companion will invite you for a short Q&A therapy session, and you unlock all sorts of outfits to dress them in. There’s even a tamagotchi mini-game for some reason. None of it gets in the way, but everything feels like it adds to the experience as a whole.
A game like this, where characters are the focus and the setting and world must be brought to life, relies heavily on design, voice acting, and music. All three are almost unparalleled. Characters are distinctive without being parodies, with perhaps one notable exception in the ludicrously-proportioned BDSM-fiend Tama, and have unique outfits, weapons, motifs – everything to make them pop.
The voice acting is on another level, with a humongous number of lines delivered by a massive cast who nail every one, from the most central of the main characters to the smallest bit parts. There are some big names sprinkled throughout but also plenty of folks that are yet to make a huge splash in video game acting, even if they’ve already made their name in anime or elsewhere. Special word must go to Anairis Quiñones, who voices Tama, delivering some of the most ridiculous lines you’ve ever heard with the good-natured humor but required straightness they deserve.
Finally the music should sit on the pantheon alongside the likes of Persona 5, Nier: Automata, and whichever ‘90s JRPGs and shooters you prefer. It is not only brilliant but incredibly varied, from funky guitar tracks to electronic beats boss music to belting choir tracks. The worst part of getting games for review is, it turns out, you can’t write with a YouTube playlist of the soundtrack going.
So then, back to the question – why this visual novel, if you’ve never touched one before? Because it will entertain, probably more than almost anything else in its genre. It is varied and fun, an adventure where you will be laughing one moment and holding back a sniffle the next. Its linearity lets the story flow more than previous, more branch-heavy games do, and that lets the surprises, many that they are, hit harder. It even tries, almost too hard, to avoid spoiling the previous game in the series if it can.
Yes, it is thoroughly mad and nearing obnoxiously horny, especially in the early stages. No, it doesn’t have the budget or motion-capture of The Quarry or Detroit. It doesn’t need it, everything for which you may play those games is better here – better characters, stronger storylines, funnier jokes, a more satisfying ending, a better universe.
When Nirvana Initiative is good, it is ridiculously, almost unbeatably good.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
