So...yeah, weird questions

[Star Sage]

I will ask, first what sort of visual novel is this?

Long Live the Queen, where you slowly build up stats between chapters, and then make choices in those based around what you've built up.

Henchmen Story, where it's just choices in general, where each choice leads into more, with a few branching bits where your choices from earlier determine your path.

Or one of those with no real choices save for like 3 over the course of the game that determine your ending/route, like Cho Dengeki Striker(I am only slightly exaggerating there).


And second, since this one has an anime, is this like the later Fate/ games where the 'golden route' is just following the anime, and the others are varying flavors of bad?

[Blanners]

Kind of the last one but not really. Robotics;Notes has a very weird choice system. You choose through replying to the other characters' messages on social media, and depending on the options you pick, you can end up in 4 different "endings". The problem is that, all 4 "endings" happen linearly, one after the other (they are even numbered), and reference things that happened in previous "endings", even though you can skip them entirely.

You will still need to get all 4 in order to proceed further into the game, so you can play the story completely out of order depending on what choices you pick. That's why I recommend using a guide (the one in the Guides section here is perfect).

For your second question, I think I've ended up answering it already, just play the endings in their proper order (chapter 5, 6, 7 then 8). It's a linear story.

Now, for some sidenotes:

* Make sure to use the fan patch when playing this. It fixes a TON of translation issues, adds mouse support, translates all of the images (most of them were just left in Japanese in the original TL), and much more: http://sonome.dareno.me/projects/rne-steam.html

* If you haven't already, I highly recommend playing Chaos;Head before this game. It will not only improve your experience with Robotics;Notes Elite, but it's also a great story on its own, and it's the first game in the series, establishing a bunch of mechanics and themes that are important for the series as a whole.