Rating: 9/10

To all newcomers to Dies irae, though the game will allow you to deviate, you must (really, really should) play the routes in this order:

1. Kasumi
   
2. Kei
   
3. Marie
   
4. Rea

Anything else will leave you spoiled and confused. Take my, and the translators', word on this. Repeat: do NOT play Marie's--or especially Rea's--route first! You can either make the right choices from the "New Game" option for each route (by following a walkthrough, probably), or select it from the start to lock into that route from the get-go.

Dies irae is at the very least a must-try visual novel. Now that the common route is free, anyone really can try it. After a decade, it has finally been remastered and localized for the western world with the support of a tremendous translation team. This is light's first foray into our market, and I hope it is successful for them given their many other worthy titles (the Senshinkan series, Kajiri Kamui Kagura, and Gunjou no Sora o Koete immediately jump to mind).

Despite its age, Dies irae still manages to be unconventional in speech, structure, and scenario. You may come for the edgy previews, but you'll stay for the characters--both the detestable and the loveable equally manage to captivate your attention until suddenly you've been reading a monologue for a half-hour.

Time spent reading Dies irae flies. The language lulls you into a sense of comfort while the plot and art will thrill until you are forced to re-evaluate your definition of "hype" at least once per route.

So give it a try, at the very least. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the performance.

Esta es la mejor novela visual que he leído, dura más de 100 horas, cada ruta es completamente diferente, tiene musica de 10/10, las mejores CGs que he visto en vida, todos los personajes son memorables. Al principio la historia es muy confusa porque no es muy claro de que es lo que trata pero despues todo empieza a tener sentido, vale la pena leerla. Solo está en ingles y usa un lenguaje y vocabulario muy avanzado.

Ah, Dies Irae. The untranslatable VN, the VN that would be spoiled when translated, the epic to rival Fate/Stay Night and the other greats. For years, I saw people learn Japanese just for this Novel (and I myself was close, but that bout of weabooism soon subsided).
It's finally here and honestly, I never thought this day would come. And boy, am I glad to be wrong. Boasting a great business model, this truly is one of the best VNs out there.
Dies could be compared to F/SN in terms of story, some characters and a few aspects of the fights, but it is very much it's own unique work. Even with some things eventually hindered by translation, the writing is excellent and just makes you want to savour it more. Intertextuality, intriguing prose (especially the monologues) and references to other works and concepts make Dies stand out from the rest, and resorting to Google in order to understand some allusions did not feel like a bother at all, and just another facet of the experience.
Some say the story is predictable, although I didn't feel it much. Despite that, Dies is more about the characters and their interactions and personalities than grand twists. You know a writer is good when everyone in the cast is memorable, and when you thought a character couldn't be more despicable, and yet by the end when all is revealed about them, you can't help feeling sadness, empathy and a wish for a better life.
If you like complex and grandiose writing, memorable characters, awe-inspiring fight scenes and lengthy philosophical reflections, this will be right up your alley. And even if it isn't, the common route and 2 side stories (around 10 hours of reading) are free, so you can raise the curtains of tonight's Grand Guignol without spending a dime!

"How would a vn go when it is made by someone who is a big fan of both Fate/Stay Night and Helsing"

Dies Irae is a title that seems to be designed to answer this very question, and does so extremely thoroughly. And somehow pulls it off while not coming off like a clone, but its own unique thing.

Basically, do you:

• Enjoy a mysterious intricate web of circumstances and character motivations that carefully unfolds throughout the four routes?
  
• Don't mind/enjoy chuuni things?
  
• Feel like finding out whether or not you like chuuni things?
  
• Are completely fine(or love) how most ladies want the protag no matter what he does
  
• Enjoy well detailed crazy fights that detail things to the point where an animation studio could just immediately get to work
  
• Enjoy a colorful cast of characters of all walks of life and how they interact
  
• You will learn disturbing details about whoever you fave character is. You are surprisingly ok with this.
  
• Question your own morals and values as result.
  
• Discover that you now like chuuni things, regardless of the past. It's ok, embrace it.
  
• Find out how much ice cream you can stuff into a ghost.

An overall fantastic VN with a translation that was successfully crowdfunded, and whose anime adaptation kickstarter reached its goal within hours of opening, Dies Irae is a classic that anyone who calls themselves a conoisseur of Visual Novels should read.

Particularly because the common route is free, there is little reason to not pick it up. While yes, it is technically a chuunige, it's one of, if not the outright best in its genre.

The recommended route order is Kasumi -> Kei -> Marie -> Rea, and not the order that the "Act I" and "Act II" routes would suggest, that refers to the release order (since Dies itself has had a pretty long release history).

Honestly, this games story is pretty clear cut and dry.

Those are the bad guys. You shouldn't like them.

But the real meat of the game are the characters.

I won't get into details, but there's a nazi loli zombie who's named after a woman in real life who was the last person to be executed under the accusation of being a witch.

And she is adorable. 10/10 why isn't she a route?

Never would have thought something as silly as immortal Nazis ruining some guy's everyday life would have become my favorite VN. Music is also on point, I can see how the composer got an award for this OST. Loses a point for not picking up Kajiri Kamui Kagura for translation at this time. Amazing read, solid 9/10.

Well after I installed patch for 4:3 res steam stopped to recognize me playing. Finished all routes and all sub-stories.

If I were 10 years younger maybe Dies might be 9/10 or 10/10 for me, but as for today I just didn't feel much while reading. A lot of themes that I've seen in other anime titles, weak main fem characters(compared to FSN), battles as emotional porn, and 100 hours vn with so much pathos just made me feel exhausted. Also if it wasn't shounen it would be better vn for me.

Still if I were a some game journalist I would probably score it as 9\10 cuz cool characters, interesting analysis of their personalities, sometimes not bad philosophy and so on, but since all my scores just mostly my personal feelings, so...

7.5\10.

“Come, gather and bear witness to my opera, now in the making. Its script is the height of cliché, I am forced to admit. And yet its actors are of the finest fold; beyond exquisite. Thus, I believe you will find it enthralling.”

This is a line from a pretty late stage of the game, yet it is for understandable reasons being often quoted to express many of the things that make Dies Irae impressive. For one, the prose is absolutely stellar: if the incredible amount of care put into every line from the English localization team mirrored the quality of the original Japanese release, we are in front of a work that transcends the limit of games directed to a young audience and leads into the realm of actual literature. Each character expresses themselves with fitting and recognizable verbal quirks, their voice acting is nothing short of superb, the insight given to their personalities is of the most eloquent and beguiling kind, certainly if one had to read Dies Irae for one purpose it would be for how well narrated are its characters.

As the translation team discussed, what appears to be a regular plot of bad villains (Nazis, moreover) threating the world hides a deeper layer of meaning where are discussed the fundamentals of its own genre, being so subtlety hidden that, even when the dialogues are close to be so metafictional you could hear the fourth wall shattering, the plot still doesn’t cease its adrenaline rush, nor loses focus. When you think you finally reached the climax, the game goes beyond and a new, more impressive climax is just around the corner, you’ll find yourself jaw dropping while reading some of the most superb over-the-top scenes ever conceived. Whenever ‘Ω Ewigkeit’ starts playing, since its first usage as the title menu theme, you can’t help but feel the blood rushing, the thrill, the awe, being swarmed by whatever is bound next to subvert your every expectation.

Dies Irae is a crescendo that can’t, or rather shouldn’t, be halted, ever, not until the reader has enough understanding of its core content to properly decide if it was impressive or tedious, charming and elegant or uselessly over bombastic. It also the hope for many more similar remarkable visual novels to receive a western release so that, even if it has still a niche of fans, many can rejoice for the wonderful possibilities of the medium.

A bunch of Actual Nazis want to summon the devil, who is a lion, by having a bunch of death battles with opera so that they can use alchemy to help a high school girl give birth to a castle made of skeletons, and the only way to defeat them is if Some Guy can learn to love the guillotine that is also a ghost from the French Revolution that lives in his elbow. He is assisted by his dumbass suicidal buddy and a samurai chick who wants to ♥♥♥♥ her zombie brother who is also her zombie grandparents, all according to the ever-growing schemes of a senile Jewish snake from Mercury named Karl in his attempts to euthanise himself.

Also RIP Spiderman. We hardly knew ye.

Edit: I have just read one of the prequel novels and learned that the author made the Spiderman joke before I did