Update Sixty-Seven: 23 October 2017
Date Warp
60 hours, 13 of 13 achievements
5.5/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
I think I’m cursed. I think the House in Fata Morgana has ruined me. After that, everything else pales in comparison.
Date Warp suffers similar problems as Blue Rose, and I’m not sure if it’s because of their age. It mixes plot - this time a modern sci-fi time travel alternate universes story - with romance, and handles both not well.
It’s just…. very meh. I’d also chalk it up to inexperience - this is an earlier Hanako Games VN, and one of their later works, the Royal Trap, works much better than this at balancing an interesting plot and a convincing romance. The most novel thing about this game is its retro-analog user interface design, and the fact that it makes you play a ‘connect the wires’ game every time there’s a choice, which brings nothing to the table.
I know there’s heated debate about whether visual novels are games or not (and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter, it’s a genre that’s not going anywhere) but adding ‘gamifying’ elements like this is really doing no one extra favors. There’s not even an in-universe justification for it, either, like the protagonist isn’t rewiring things and isn’t an engineer.
That brings me to another weak point - this is a story that happens to the protagonist rather than about the protagonist. Janet is largely along for the ride and gets roped into this zany adventure, and none of her actions really influences the plot - they influence which particular boy then influences the plot. It’s not… not great.
If you have it in your backlog or want to pick it up in a sale, I won’t dissuade you, but you’re not going to miss anything by passing this one up.
Next up: RNGesus says -
See you soon!
I told you so fata morgana is going to ruin every vn forevermore i mso sorry
this is an earlier Hanako Games product, and one of their later works works much better than this at what it sets out to do.
That’s why I always try to play games “in order,” so to speak. Sure, it’s not like I’ll be completely lost if I don’t beat Tales of Phantasia before I play Tales of Symphonia, but my reaction will be “yay, they improved on this aspect in the sequel” rather than “aww, this aspect was done better in the sequel.” Does that make sense? Maybe you could try doing something similar rather than using RNG.
I do, but only in direct story sequels, or spirital sequels (so, Black Mesa, HL2, the 2 episodes as well as A Normal Lost Phone and then Another Lost Phone). Since this game is meant to be stand alone, I’m going to play it that way.
It didn’t change my liking or disliking of it any more or less, though, it just would change the comment I made. I should clarify (and now that you’ve quoted it I realize that was a pretty clumsy sentence) I am happy that they’ve improved as a studio, and that feeling would persist no matter what order I play non-related games in. c:
I…I can’t imagine putting 60 hours into something thats meh
Are you okay?
:3<
OH LOL no the game in total is probably like 5 hours - I leave visual novels up and running on my computer all the time.
Came here to say exactly the same thing!