Chaos;Child

I originally written this as a review and abandoned it due to lack of time and only now rediscovered my draft after planning to write a review for another game. It's been quite awhile since I last played Chaos;Child, so instead of trying to finish the draft, I'm going to list the bullet points from my draft of what I felt when I finished the game.

• Chaos;Child is the ugly duckling of the SciAdv series. It is a sequel to Chaos;Head which was never released outside of Japan.

• The basic premise of the game involves our protagonist Takuru and his friends who run the school's newspaper club and decide to investigate a series of bizarre murders happening around town.

• Chaos;Child is definitely nowhere near as popular as Steins;Gate for good reason. This game is LONG, even for VN standards. A standard run of Chaos;Child is about twice as long as Steins;Gate true ending route. The game feels padded out, many scenes are recycled and could have been edited extensively to reduce unnecessary clutter.

• The introduction of psychic swords named Di-swords felt completely out of place. They are just suddenly plopped down about half way into the story and expects that you played Chaos;Head. In fact, the only reason I can think they were included was because Chaos;Head had them and the game had to introduce a way for our characters to fight without using real weapons/fists.

• There is a lot of unnecessary fan-service in this game. Our main protagonist is very horny and likes to see/imagine girls, let's say in "compromising positions". There is no actual nudity, but these sequences are too prominent and egregious and makes me wish that the artists drew more meaningful story related content.

• The game is gory and I do not recommend this game for players who cannot stomach violent scenes.

• The game is also surprisingly relevant and boasts an intriguing commentary surrounding the media. Chaos;Child's message is that few people actually do the leg work to learn what is truly real and most people obtain knowledge that's been regurgitated and filtered by the media.

• Voice work is great in general, but a little too anime for my taste, be prepared to hear lots of exaggerated grunts, screaming and wincing noises.

• Side ending routes are a mixed bag, some feel integral to the main story while other endings read like fan-fiction.

Overall, I can't wholeheartedly recommend Chaos;Child. It's simply not as well streamlined and packaged as Steins;Gate. The game is bloated with dull character building and fan-service moments with insufficient art to compensate for the amount of game time. It still has that SciAdv touch though! Chaos;Child has a fairly interesting story and a true ending that will keep you thinking for days.