Retrocausality Reviews

[b]IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TIME TRAVEL OR QUANTUM MECHANICS PLEASE READ OVER THIS REVIEW[/b] I really REALLY wanted to recommend this game. I am going through trying to experience several time travel visual novels and this was first on my list. I picked it up on sale when it was near two dollars, and I still do not believe it was worth it. Including the main story and the side stories, it takes approximately 1 3/4 hours to read. That's a decent amount for the price IF it is written well. So I am going to break this down into the parts that I think were done well and the parts I think could use some work and then why I eventually decided to give it the review I did. [h2]GOOD THINGS[/h2] Honestly, the side stories were some of the best parts of this novel. Why? This novel actually really shines in its ability to explain certain physical and mathematical paradoxes in layman's terms. Explaining a Cantor's Diagonalization argument visually using a spreadsheet is a very neat idea. Furthermore, when the game attempts to explain CPT symmetry to me (a realm of quantum mechanics I did not know well), it actually really succeeded in supplying the gist. The Feynman diagrams were a nice touch. It was sort of hard to tell when the actual science stopped and the world's mechanics and author's vision started to seep in, but that is to be expected of a fictional story. Honestly, these parts of the novel remind me of 999 and Umineko in some ways, and I really appreciate that. [h2]COULD USE SOME WORK...[/h2] As a time travel story, it was always going to become confusing, but the confusion presented by the novel was more annoying than satisfyingly puzzle-ish in my opinion. I will be explaining a couple of my confusions: [list] [*] The beginning premise sets up [spoiler] this calamitous event where Earth is displaced by a future version of itself. For some inexplicable reason, the protagonist has a camera that records this (?) which allows him to see the transformation of the room into the new laboratory. He later sees this video and [/spoiler] jumps to a couple of conclusions that seem near impossible to actually reach without having knowledge of the story itself. Which I think relates to the next issue. [*] Pacing; the pacing is really fast. I understand that this is only a prologue (with more to come either as a separate game or in an update? I am unsure), but so many things happen without any payoff or reason. Several characters are introduced, seemingly just to use all of the stock art the creator had. Only the two main characters are really developed (if at all due to the story's short length). Having a bit more downtime between events would help, along with a more cohesive view into the protagonist's thoughts. [*] During the end of the prologue, [spoiler]we see a fight break out between the MC and his future counterpart. It is near impossible to follow the dialogue due to the fact that they share a name. Perhaps a numeral suffix would help distinguish the characters a bit more? It just made it a tad annoying to read[/spoiler] [*] The "Twist": I think it could be a bit better set up. [spoiler]Obviously, the retrocausal title kind of implies it, but other hints of foreshadowing seem to be non-existent. This is also likely due to a lack of time to set it up. Predestination is a great example of the twist done well be setting up some interesting plot dynamics. Similarly, the main character managing to "hack" and "find his way" into the base IS a good indication of some fishy plot twist that I felt was well executed. The parents part, however, was not as greatly foreshadowed.[/spoiler] [*] The tonal shift near the end was a complete 180 that really took away from the momentum the story had been providing. The Jojo references were also kind of show stopping too. [*] The art style; please refer to the below section for more info. [*] There were a couple of grammatical and spelling issues, but none too bad to actually affect understanding, so I don't really mind that much. However, the first part of the prologue has some really clunky and unnatural dialogue from the main character that took me out of the moment. [/list] [h2]WHY DID I GIVE IT THIS RATING AND UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES DO I RECOMMEND IT?[/h2] This novel functions best as a teacher. If you can somehow get this for 99 cents, I think I would recommend it, especially if you love math and quantum mechanics, as it provides pretty unique views and simple explanations on some rather complicated concepts. However, it fails at what it should be foremost: a visual novel. The visuals are either lifted from packages provided to the author or AI generated, sometimes causing a clash to the art style that breaks immersion. In that case, if the visual part of the visual novel was created using others' works, the only thing I can rate this game on is the novel portion, which I found lacking. Again, I think it has a lot of potential and talent, but it has a lot of rough patches.

time travel really does make it confusing i dont get it extremely short vn with interesting concepts but the presentation is weak but i did enjoy it its nice

Well it's a good game for $2.99 if you shut your brain off and suspend all belief. I swear I have seen some of these assets before like a lot of them and the credits were as mysterious to me as all the science talk. It's a great visual novel! Fun with a nice little ending. No choices but all the assets look good even though I wonder about certain things like they are all generic looking assets which could be for a reason idk. They are still nice and serve the story but I would have preferred a more distinctive art style with more characterization instead of nonstop action and science talk but for $2.99 it's a good deal. It looks like it might be setting a sequel which I will definitely buy and play depending on price. Seems like what Steins Gate is supposedly about without the distinct art style and story/characters but it was fun and sci-fi and time-traveley which I like. It is a good game 7/10 but I say buy it it was a great 1.8 hours.