38.2 hours played
Written 18 days ago
[h2] Spoiler warning for both STEINS;GATE & STEINS;GATE 0 [/h2]
Once again, I've borrowed this game, 100%ed it and bought it today just to express all the downsides everyone else hesitates to express, Overwhelmingly Positive reviews tell it all, of course. The first playthrough and even seeing all the endings was really, really fun. So fun, in fact, I closed my eyes on everything that made this game bad and just enjoyed it.
And only once I was fully done with this game and got my hands on STEINS;GATE - My Darling's Embrace and STEINS;GATE: Linear Bounded Phenogram did I realized how much did this game's quality plummeted compared to its predecessors.
I won't spoil therefore mentioned games, but the fact that the second one is available only as a part of STEINS;GATE ELITE deserves a breakdown of its own, but I digress. Onto my first complaint about STEINS;GATE 0:
The first thing that catches the eye when thinking about this game - why did you butcher the art so badly? I know that art is completely subjective and all, but there was LITERALLY NO REASON for the devs to redraw all the sprites in a plain, boring, CHAOS;HEAD-like style sprites that look really goofy and out of place, especially Kurisu, they've butchered her so bad I was holding back laughs when I saw her sprite being mad.
Character design from three previous STEINS;GATE entries not only looked great, they were very, very unique, especially the grain on character's clothes and hair. But alright, maybe the devs got on the bad side of the original artist that designed all characters before, and they were left with no other option but to make new sprites, but goddammit!
There are scenes in the game where older sprites stand right beside the old ones, and it looks very, very out of place. Not only that, the older sprites they've used don't have the grainy effect on them, making them look flat and not really fitting.
But alright, maybe the devs wanted us to feel the change Rintaro's view of the world? NO! There are moments in-game where Mayuri wears her school uniform with a sprite that was just copy-pasted from My Darling's Embrace with the only change being therefore mentioned grain effect removal, also, Faris at times wore her dress with a sprite copy-pasted from the first game.
To sum it up, compared to the 3 previous entries, art in this game sucks ass really, really hard.
But alright, I can tolerate this change, through grinding my teeth, of course, but alright. What about the story?
I have a lot to say, but since this was probably already said by many people before me, I'll try to be short. The game shouldn't have been turned into Call of Duty set in the STEINS;GATE universe. I get that the WWIII will result in witnessing Call of Duty on the streets of Akihabara, but still, STEINS;GATE as a whole isn't about this. I really enjoyed this scenario the first time I've played the game, but still, after analyzing it, I really grew to dislike it.
Personally, I would've much preferred seeing Rintaro's life on the Alpha Worldline after Mayuri's death and SERN's abduction, but it is what it is, the story was interesting either way, but was it, really?
The plot is shaped like shit. There are a few useless characters that barely even contribute to the story at all, like Fubuki and Kaede. But the cherry on top is Kagari. Kagari was made for the sole purpose of somehow advancing the plot and being a catalyst of at least some action in the game while not doing literally anything but being a cry-baby.
Also, there's Maho that straight up destroys the character of Kurisu, also they've turned her into a Vtuber, how dare you? But that is purely subjective, I won't argue if it's not the case.
What I will argue for, though, is that this game was made by some really hardcore perverts, sitting in a goon cave and thinking of perverted things for Itaru to say just to make him look not like a genius hacker that has made a time machine, but only as a disgusting pervert that plays H-Games all day.
But alright, maybe Itaru was always like this, but goddamn, naked Suzuha fighting Kagari in a latex suit being presented as a serious plot twist is just a joke. Also, quite a few CGs are drawn in angles that make them look like STEINS;GATE is a porn game on its own. Of course, it's very important for the dramatic effect and plot development to show off Karagi's huge ass on half of the screen while she's bleeding out on the ground. Great, just... just, perfect!
Okay, rant over, onto a serious issue that many novels have and not many actually try to deal with, and that is of course the way the player can obtain endings.
In first STEINS;GATE endings are branched as D-Mails that you either send or don't send, only two endings have quite strict requirements that will require googling to achieve, but it's not that big of an issue.
In STEINS;GATE 0 you won't survive without a chart of endings and the order of completion, because not only the game won't tell you what choice does what, but it also won't tell you that the true ending is hidden behind achieving a separate ending of its own, and only after that you will be able to get the ending, but it won't stop there, you'll also have to do some requirements to get yourself on the true ending, of course, as always.
I can rant for hours about how this is the worst entry in the STEINS;GATE series as a whole, but I've probably ranted enough for now. If some of you actually managed to read to the end - I also have a review of the original STEINS;GATE in my profile.
To sum up - STEINS;GATE 0 feels really out of place compared to the other games and made some choices that didn't really suit it well, but still, it's a part of STEINS;GATE, and we have to accept it.
