TOKYO CHRONOS Reviews

I've played this game on April/may 2019, Through a Family library share in a Google Cardboard using 3rd Party Software. I thought i'd give up quickly due to the nature of how Uncomfortable Google Cardboard were for long sessions. however, i found myself quickly intrigued, and somehow managed to finish the Novel. I was in tears. whether YOU would be in tears or not, it's up to you. Maybe it all lies on your level of empathy and attention? Maybe not. Despite it's little issues, nonetheless, It's a beautiful story. this was, in particular, really incredible and i wished all my friends could play it. after finished, still revised some chapters and wished i had erased the entire game from my head just to have that first time treatment again. It's been 2 years now. i told myself this would be my very first VR Experience to BUY once i had a proper VR. And here i am. -- If you enjoy Literature, Light Novel or Visual Novel. then you know it's style; It's in a Mystery Format. You will be going through Science, and of course, Science based analogies to help the less intellectual one. Regardless, i believe all you need is just to pay attention and you're set.

Valiant effort to incorporate visual novel with VR. Enjoyed the various ways they experimented with the platform. Different take on Anime OP, common VN tropes, and the suspenseful moments are not half bad. The script could've used some editing. And some fresh ideas. It's not a good sign when everything feels like familiar JP territory. Some ok plot twists here there, but the final reveal is a let down. All the padding and filler towards the final part of the game, really wore my patience thin. The less said about the MC, the better. All in all begrudgingly thumbs-up, but seriously. Get a better writer and/or editor.

I have never done any reviews on a game before, so this will be my first. This game is incredibly underrated considering the price, and compared to some other (cough) "Similar" experiences, you feel connected and set in for a long, intricately written, and well paced ride. Having owned a VR for the better part of a year and without finding enough willpower to set it up most of the time, this experience has given me enough motivation to come back to it the very next day, seating myself for a what would be a real long trip into the world that is Tokyo Chronos. Do you know how hard it is to clean a VR headset writhed in tears? If not, this game can definitely help you find out. 11/10 would cry in VR again. - Side: I need more microfiber cloths.

This is the first Visual Novel I play in VR, because I wanted to know what the experience was, and on that matter. So I will just leave here the 2 reasons why I recommend this game: VR Visual Novel is really cool, and Monono Yu (The pink haired character). ------- Now for the review itself. My only problem is with the story's base setting, because I just I found out I'm not really a fan of the "detective"/"mystery murder" format, as I feel it's just a sad excuse to make an compelling story, not that it isn't. I mean, Danganronpa is interesting, and surprising, but here... If I were to compare it, I would say it's a mix of Angel Beats and Steins' Gate, two stories that I really like, however, I feel they were great because they either went full science mode, or full spiritual mode. This one... As a science-cultured person, the idea of "Quantum"s acting as fairies for people was a really poor and sad excuse for the super natural part of the plot... But I do understand that the point of the story is not that, just that this was the excuse for the sake of the "murder mystery/time loop" plot. Some stereotypes in a couple characters felt a little too forced for me, but maybe I'm just used to better stories, or maybe I just don't know any people similar to some of those forced characters, but that wasn't enough to spoil the overall mood anyway, because the experience of a VR Visual Novel was certainly interesting. I could look around, see everyone's expressions, understand more of their situation even when they are not the ones talking, And although I say some characters felt forced, others were really well executed too and felt fitting, so there is a balance. The story also does a Yoko Taro, forcing you into a Bad Ending, and then you have to replay the game with some extras, seeing the perspective of the supporting characters, but although it may look like just a replay, it is a sequel to the first ending, as you may notice the changes in the "non-skippable" parts, thus, the existence of a continuous Time Loop. So certainly, the story and characters can be interesting, the excuses were too forced and the forced bad ending was annoying, but I could only understand why it was like that because of the changes I saw in the "second loop". ---- Having finished the ending now, I must admit that the final conflict, let me say it's related to "self-sacrifice" not to spoil too much, and I personally dislike that kind of thinking, and I can't understand people who think like that to such "advanced" levels, so although the ending felt a little stupid, the message was good. Monono Yu is also the best girl. In the second loop, most of the scenes I couldn't skip were related to her, so I was pretty ok with seeing the changes all over again, although seeing the ending, I now understand why it changed so much after all. ---- Having now fully finished this game's sequel, Altdeus, if you are wondering if you need to play Tokyo Chronos for that, you are not really strictly required, but you will get a few references that are both "irrelevant" and one quite relevant to Altdeus' plot that will improve your experience on Altdeus.

Honestly, I was expecting more, but you're just seating there, pushing left trigger... and that's it... If you're into VNs I guess it's ok, but well, I couldn't even begin to get interested there.... just left trigger non stop, is just.... meh.

The first VR Visual Novel messes up where it could had put it strenghts - immersion. The world is unrealistically huge and the charakters are too big. This is confirmed by the devs to be on purpose, so there is no fix. This is sad, since fixing this issue that is heavily complained about could be fixed with a few minutes of work.

Experience the unique weirdness of being hugged in VR - all of the discomfort of having someone invade your personal space, without any of the warmth or intimacy of touch!

I am sad to say that I dislike Tokyo Chronos. I really liked it at first. It is a solid proof of concept for VR visual novels and their potential for immersive storytelling like never before. However, as a visual novel itself, is it good? Not quite. The central mystery and characters are actually decently interesting. However, one fatal, insurmountable flaw holds it back: its pacing. it is extremely slow and tedious. Conversations ramble on and on, and constant internal monologues kill any semblance of progress. I've played a lot of visual novels in my life - and trust me, if anyone can tolerate bad pacing, it's me. 90% of visual novels have bad pacing at some point in their runtime. It is a fact of life. Even some of the best ones like Umineko, Muv-Luv Alternative, Steins;Gate, SubaHibi - their pacing is absolute trash at times. But it is the climaxes; the high points of these stories that are so orgasmically good, so mind-blowing that I can tolerate the pacing, all so I can experience that high again. Tokyo Chronos, however, lacks these moments. It never manages to hit a particular high, and comes off as somewhat weak. For a murder mystery, it is surprisingly PG, with no real edginess, no blood, or sense of horror or dread that keeps you on your seat like lets say a Danganronpa or Zero Escape game. It is not enough to make me strap on my clunky headset, sit in my chair, and strain my eyes for hours and hours on end reading it. You have to understand that wearing a VR headset for a long time is really uncomfortable. As a result, the experience needs to be a lot tighter to make it really worth your time. Tokyo Chronos didn't do that - it did the exact opposite. To illustrate how tedious this game is, let me tell you how to get the true ending, spoiler-free. First, you have to play through the entire main route once, which is already pretty long, then replay the entire thing from the beginning, but now the game sprinkles in a bunch of extra scenes here and there to let you delve into individual character routes, and you have to read all of them to finally unlock the true ending. At this point, still pretty standard visual novel stuff - nothing I haven't already seen a bunch of times before.This would be fine and dandy if it wasn't so unbelievably tedious: skipping in this game is painfully slow and annoying. It only skips scenes, not dialogue, and there are usually 20 scenes per chapter that you've already seen before in your previous playthrough, with only 3-4 new scenes. To add insult to injury, the extra info that the game drip feeds isn't even that interesting; most of them are just there to pad out the plot, without really helping you arrive at the truth at all. After a while, I just gave up. I wasn't gonna sit here for 20 more hours for crumbs of plot at a time in between incessant skipping of scenes I've already seen before. Here's hoping Altdeus is a much better game due to it being their second attempt at making a VR visual novel.

First and foremost, this is a visual novel, so a lot of focus has to be in the story itself. Now, the story isn't bad, and I can see what they were going for with the story and how it is presented. There is an interesting question posed through the narrative, a thought experiment that I did like. However, the overall experience is... lacking. The VR space is not used well - there are no instances of meaningfully looking around the environment for one thing, and for another most scenes are presented in a way that would easily translate to the 2d medium common to a visual novel. The experience is extremely linear with very, very few choices presented to the player. Audio is in Japanese only, which is not necessarily a downside but worth pointing out given the price point of the game and the absence of other features. The visual design has distorted proportions where other characters are abnormally large compared to the player's point of view. Altogether this led to an overall lacklustre experience in my opinion.

I have always had an urge to play visual novels but for some reason I never did. This game caught my eye and I decided to give the genre a go. And oh boy.. The game really pulled me in. Top notch voice acting, beautiful story, well designed characters. The ending actually made me cry... and I am a grown man. This game set me a standard for future VR visual novel kind of games. If I am to buy one in the future, I except nothing less than Tokyo Chronos offered me. Beautiful game, highly recommend.