So far, this game is bad!

[Jakey Ess]

I'm terribly sorry, but that's how I currently feel about this game.

I am making this thread to see if anybody else is feeling or has felt the same way about the game up to or maybe past the point I currently am.

I have currently played 18 hours and I think I might be nearing the end of Chapter 4, more specifically August 9th when the team are preparing for a party for Suzuha's arrival at the lab.

I'm no stranger to visual novels. The ones I have played so far are the Danganronpa trilogy, the first Ace Attorney trilogy, the Zero Escape trilogy and Doki Doki Literature Club, while other games such as Blazblue: Calamity Trigger, Persona 4 Golden and Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 have VN elements in them.

I should also say that I do not really watch anime at all, but since I have played enough of games in that style, I am familiar with tropes that exist in them.

That being said, I have decided to give Steins;Gate a go, thinking this would be right up my alley, and so far I am hating it. I kind of force myself to keep playing, tbh. I have heard other people saying that they thought it was slow to begin with and that it gets better, but I have other problems beside this.

The first and possibly biggest problem I have with this game is the pacing. It is extremely slow, and it's not just from the character and world building. Conversations go on for longer than they are supposed to, the flow of the story frequently stops to tell the same lame joke or use a character trope for comedic purposes, some which weren't even funny the first time, and pointless scenes that add very little value to the plot.

I know character and world building is quite important to any good story, but this is ridiculous. As I said, I have played 18 hours of this so far, and everything that has happened up to this point could have easily been told in half that time.

As I said, I'm quite familiar with anime tropes, but this game takes some of the worst tropes, cranks them up to 11, and uses them to death. It makes the read more unbearable than it already is. Some scenes like the Luka cosplay scene were just not necessary. They always at least slightly bother me, sometimes to the point where I am cringing.

I'm not a big fan of the characters either. They're not terrible, but they are just walking stereotypes whose personalities do not exceed past them. You have a mad man, a tsundere, an idiot, a trap, a catgirl in a maid outfit, and a overweight pervert (literally), just to name a few. Though, I didn't find Rintaro all that bad until he forcefully grabbed at Luka's crotch when he believes that Luka's sex change had worked. That scene made me really uncomfortable.

So, to sum up, the pacing is horrendous, the awful tropes are frequently present throughout, the dialogue is ugly and the characters are poor. I just wanted to know if anybody else felt the same way, because those who enjoyed this game said they had a minor problem with the slow opening and nothing else.

I will keep playing this, though. In fact, I'm interested to see what the game does to overcome these problems, because right now I am playing what is nothing but a glorified Try Not to Cringe challenge. This game is not good.

[Sir Loki]

the first half of s;g for most people is boring, but dude keep playing believe me, the second half is pure gold

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by Sir_Loky01:

the first half of s;g for most people is boring, but dude keep playing believe me, the second half is pure gold :SG0_OK:

I sure hope so because I just wasted a whole week on this. It would take a miracle for this game to improve, so it had better be worth it.

[Jakey Ess]

Welp,
I just got to THAT part at the end of Chapter 5.
Okay, I'm intrigued.
But, seriously, why was the buildup like 20 hours long? A very painful 20 hours, no less.
It got a little less awful towards that part, but I'm still not a massive fan of the characters and some of the tropes like fanservice and perverted jokes, particularly towards the female characters, felt like they were slapped on.
I am definitely gonna keep playing this. I'll see how I feel about the rest of it.

[Utopian]

It's necessary for it to give you all the clues you could need to solve the puzzle. Basically, by the time Okabe starts ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the timeline again, you could theoretically be able to guess everything that's going to happen based on those first 20 hours or so. Yes, it can *seem* boring at first, but when you get that "oh ♥♥♥♥, so this is what happened" moment, it's absolutely worth it in my opinion

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by BeeTheImmortal:

It's necessary for it to give you all the clues you could need to solve the puzzle. Basically, by the time Okabe starts ... with the timeline again, you could theoretically be able to guess everything that's going to happen based on those first 20 hours or so. Yes, it can *seem* boring at first, but when you get that "oh ..., so this is what happened" moment, it's absolutely worth it in my opinion

I would like to see that. He has already started messing with the timeline with his Time Leap Machine, so I am anticipating it.

[カジム ⁧⁧ KazMotor]

Just see him returning after chapter 11 and screaming that this is a masterpiece

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by нагибатор_2009:

Just see him returning after chapter 11 and screaming that this is a masterpiece :Kurisu:

That's a bit spoilerish (I'm on Chapter 6), but good to know.

[カジム ⁧⁧ KazMotor]

Oh, sorry, mate. I was stupid and wrote without thinking

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by нагибатор_2009:

Oh, sorry, mate. I was stupid and wrote without thinking

You're alright. Anyway, I just finished Suzuha's ending. Rintaro getting dark thoughts about being God because he can repeat the two days and even considering raping and even murdering Suzuha was a dark turn I was not expecting. Glad it turned out good in the end. Sweet ending.

[カジム ⁧⁧ KazMotor]

I must say that the true secret ending is the best I've ever seen in my life. Just don't drop it.

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by нагибатор_2009:

I must say that the true secret ending is the best I've ever seen in my life. Just don't drop it.

I'm definitely not dropping this now I'm more interested.

[Jakey Ess]

Right, I'm done with the game. Got all the endings, CGs, tips, achievements, etc.

So, since it's been a while, I should probably look at the game in retrospect.

To be brutally honest, I don't know how to feel about this game. There was the issue with the game's slow start and, to be honest, I don't think the rest of the game justified it. Even then, it's still slow in places. ]The Faris V 4C RaiNet tournament final took forever. That should have been condensed.

As for my experience with the story, it's a good story but it's not made much of an impact on me. I might even daresay that the game just feels incomplete, like it's didn't develop the setting and characters properly, and therefore I felt that it didn't use the whole 50-something hours to its full potential.

Also, I felt some things were a bit...obvious? For example, when Rintaro goes back to save Kurisu only to find that he is her murderer, that didn't really shock me because it's something that was very likely to happen in a time travel story. While I did enjoy the ethics and morality played on the time travel here, I didn't find the concepts to be that interesting (The time travel concepts in Zero Escape, for instance, were a lot more engaging).

As for the characters, not a huge fan. There are some characters I really like, some of which had great development, but for the most part, they don't show much growth, especially considering that each one gets a chance to shine in the spotlight. This is linked to the wasted potential I talked about earlier. The writing and the dialogue were fine, for the most part.

So, I'm quite conflicted. There is a lot to like, but it's not that great. I guess this just didn't click with me the way it did to other people.

[Jakey Ess]

I also have two questions:
1) In the alpha worldline, Suzuha posted on @channel as John Titor in 2010 because she was trying to warn people of the dystopian future. Fine. But in the beta worldline, she does the same thing in 2000, and I assume it was to warn people of WWIII. But then she starts posting facts and established theories about time travel. Of course, she mixed some lies in, but why would she do that? It was because of her that Dr Nakabachi was able to create his own time travel theorem, which lead to the presentation that kicked off the whole events of the game. Is she an idiot or am I missing something?

2) This is going to seem silly because this is about something very insignificant, but I can't wrap my head around it. In Chapter 8, Rintaro visits the shrine to tell Luka that she needs to cancel her D-Mail to go back to being a boy and thus be one step closer to saving Mayuri. Luka bursts into tears because of this. But then Rintaro says something along the lines of, "I have a hard time thinking about you as a girl anyway." Upon hearing this, Luka stops crying, smiles at Rintaro and says, "So that's how you see me," before running off. I understand that Luka has feelings for Rintaro and probably regained memories of being a boy at that point, but I can't figure out why Luka reacted that way.

[Utopian]

1: It was for Okabe and co. to see and basically allows them to figure a few things out. Dr. Nakabachi didn't get his theories from Titor, he got them from Kurisu, and Titor's are only similar because they are also based on Kurisu's work. Dr. Nakabachi didn't even care about Titor at all, and Suzuha's posts had nothing to do with his conference, it was all because of Kurisu. So yeah, that's just you missing something.
2: Luka knew everything all along, but thought that he/she would just roll with it, but upon coming to the realization, that Okabe would never go along with it, she just gave up. That's how I interpreted it.

[Jakey Ess]

Originally posted by BeeTheImmortal:

1: It was for Okabe and co. to see and basically allows them to figure a few things out. Dr. Nakabachi didn't get his theories from Titor, he got them from Kurisu, and Titor's are only similar because they are also based on Kurisu's work. Dr. Nakabachi didn't even care about Titor at all, and Suzuha's posts had nothing to do with his conference, it was all because of Kurisu. So yeah, that's just you missing something.
2: Luka knew everything all along, but thought that he/she would just roll with it, but upon coming to the realization, that Okabe would never go along with it, she just gave up. That's how I interpreted it.

1. I may have read something wrong, but just before her and Rintaro went back to try and save Kurisu and fail on purpose, didn't Suzuha say that she posted things about time travel on @channel which is where Dr Nakabachi got his ideas from in the first place? Nothing was mentioned about stealing the ideas from Kurisu. Kurisu told him about her theorems right after the presentation.
2. Wow, Luka must be good on faking tears, then. in that case, she probably regained her memories of being male after Rintaro sexually assaulted her to try and prove unsuccessfully that she was not female.