Paranoia: Deliver Me Reviews

One of the last VNs localised, or should I say, traumatised by one of the worst translation offenders - SakuraGame. What is worse, this is a lengthy and convoluted story, which makes it even more tragic. As you can easily see, I do not recommend. Let's talk. I could write about how the seemingly disjointed and unexpected events lay psyche of the protagonist bare for us, or mention philosophical themes employed by the author, but what is the point. The barely understandable English localisation spoils it all. Yes, I went through all endings but I assure you it was often painful trying to comprehend what is going on. I developed a certain resistance to this pain after playing many other VNs that received the same treatment from SG but my tolerance is unlikely to be shared by many so I cannot honestly recommend it to others. Too bad, as this is a genuinely good story. Themes are rather deep and complex. From what I read it is based on novel, Chinese I believe, that was received well. Wasted potential of broader recognition is palpable here. Too bad as Chinese VNs do not share acclaim as much as Japanese ones within this niche genre of games. Art can be simply described as 'anime style', however, it has this distinct feel of originality. This makes sense as it is a Chinese production. Style is more serious, not moe or kawaii, which is not that common these days. I see this is as a positive. Whole design and backgrounds share this aspect as well. Considering the VN's length there are not many CGs here and character sprites are rather limited but for the asked price it is quality product. Opening movie that is actually later in the first chapter is pretty enticing. Quality and distinct visuals confirmed. Music is one of the main themes here and it sure does not disappoint. Plenty of tracks, several songs, lots of variety. Man, I really enjoyed the audio served here. Emotional where is needs to be, building tension well, fitting action scenes nicely. No complaints whatsoever. One of the better I had pleasure to experience in VNs. Pity no OST DLC here. No bugs encountered. To conclude, this VN is an example of quality product receiving horrendous treatment. As much as I would love to recommend it I can't. Enjoyment of well done writing was stripped away and this is the most important aspect of VNs in my mind. Hence, with a sorrow in my heart, I feel forced to give this product a thumbs down: 4.4/10

It's relatively inexpensive when on sale, and yes, the broken English takes away from the experience but I do really like the music and story so far. I haven't finished the game yet and perhaps my opinion might change in the future but as of now, I recommend this game for it's unique suspense and attempt at story telling. The biggest con? Broken English. The biggest pro? The music.

Reminded me of the time I had a schizophrenic episode a lot.. Not only the content of the game but also the randomness and having to RNG the choices because there is nothing they're really "attached" to. World building is really bad mc was not insane enough either because she basically had her passion and future taken away from her and she didn't even react like ok girl what's up with you being so nonchalant- ...

In this mystery VN, we follow Lingluo, a music student, who has been tormented by nightmares and insomnia. Attending the prestigious school "Fifth Music", she lives a life under pressure and is constantly faced with the fear of not being good enough. Will she succumb to her nightmares or find her way back to what she truly loves - music? This game was recently translated from its Chinese original. I, like many others, ended up waiting for two years to finally see the finished product and I'm semi-disappointed. Some of the postings have already addressed the issues with the English translation: There are grammar and translation errors, which do not hinder immersion in my opinion, but be warned. If you need a perfect translation, this may truly grind your gears and I would not recommend buying the game in that case. The story begins with a quiz with the weirdest questions. I actually thought the quiz was a survey by the developers to be posted somewhere, as I was completely lost, i.e. "Meteorite, butterfly and eagle, which one is agreed on by us?" I'm puzzled as to what these questions actually mean. If they were meant to confuse the reader then they truly achieve that (if only the grammar could be on point as well!). I really want to like this game. If you have seen the screenshots and artwork, you know how good this game looks. Let me tell you, it also plays really well. The characters are beautifully drawn and the music is great. The entire VN is based on music and has references to classical music and idols. Additionally, the plot provides a welcoming change from the other crap on Steam. There is no nudity, it's a gore and mystery novel. Heartbeat crescendos and breathing in our ears, we stumble through the halls of our empty school, trying to find reason in what we have just experienced. We are lost and scared, drawn into battles. Insomnia has never felt so real. If the aforementioned issues can be fixed, I will change my review. I will leave my review as positive, because I believe the changes can be made. I would recommend using the guide on the Chinese original and translating it to English as I could finally dig for the information I was missing. The game has a few tough elements to it and achieving all endings can truly be excruciating.

My intentions at the beginning weren't to downgrade this one. I know most people aren't recommending the game because of th translation, but I don't feel that's the biggest issue in here. Let me go by topics: 1. Despite not being a well translated game, you can actually understand what's going on! In fact, people are saying that this is a machine translated title but it isn't, because no machine translation is going to put human type errors like "calme" or "tol,d" ou "plaigiarism". What it seems to me is that the thanslator/proofreader is not very well versed in English, and I've seen other titles from SakuraGame that are well translated (not this title, unfortunately, but you'll get what's going on); 2. Although I didn't reached the ending, nor the true ending that you only get after several replays, I find the game mechanics to be a hassle and the story doesn't feel like it's that grand--we know that there's something going on with illusions, but it's not written in a way that really persuades you (despite bad translations); 3. This game has just too many bad endings!! I'm talking about 27 to 30 bad endings, and even using a really good walkthrough, and dying 3 times at the beginning (before the walkthrough) even with the guide in my hands, even at the layer 6 pushing all the stats to 80~90, not skipping music at weekends, I kept getting bad ends.... 4. And after some hours... you're still confused (once again, not saying this because of the translation, I'm talking about the story in itself). You start thinking about the hours you're wasting on this, you start thinking why even using guides you're not getting there, you start thinking that you'll have to replay it (after the first good ending) at least 3 more times to get the true one and you kinda want to give up.... especially after quite a lot of bad endings between. And these are the true reasons for me to not recommend this title. It's cheap, so you can give it a try. I don't think the worse is really the translation, is just the mechanics-- sometimes you need to raise friendship, other times you need to raise stats, other play music... it's a hassle of a game in terms of mechanics, at least for me, and keeps changing those mechanics in each chapter like it's a complete different game.

I don’t think I ever got so disappointed with a promising work as this one. The art is absolutely stunning and it’s a shame the horrid translations AND the minigames make it literally impossible to play. Believe me, I’ve had to drop the game, as crazy interesting as the plot was. When it comes to the translations and writing, some of it is legible enough, but in its entirety, I feel like I’m reading something that was translated twice through Google Translate. You try to get the meaning, but it’s a game of telephone – you end up getting more and more gibberish until you understand nothing at all. This game has various chapters and routes. To a certain point, it’s all linear except for a few bad endings; after some chapters, though, we start having some minigames to spice it up. We have a kind of dating sim mechanic, in which you choose an activity to do (study, go out, sleep, etc.) and where to go; you might meet someone at those places or you might level up in other areas, and that will affect your outcome. Sounds fun, right? Well, the catch is… it’s all randomized; there are some things you can do to try and secure your route, but in the end, it’s all up to the game. I got stuck in here – a friend of mine did actually finish and told me the story was amazing, but he wouldn’t recommend it to anyone since that meant overcoming those impossible puzzles. Oh, and I forgot to mention – there are up to 30 ENDINGS (in which only 8 are “good” ones), most of them relying on randomized results. It’s very cheap and you can even find it cheaper on sales, so if these factors don’t deter you, go for it! Just remember to persevere through this game of chance and delusion. I personally wouldn't recommend it, buuut....

This game is very cute and the art style is truly beautiful, it's also quite long for a visual novel, i'd say longer than average... However the language translation is very poor, so a lot of the atmosphere is lost and the story is sadly lost in translation (⇀‸↼‶)

[h1] Warning! VN Not meant for Dummies~[/h1] [b][i] When a lie is repeated a thousand times, will it become the truth? [/i] [/b] I do literally mean about what I say on the title of this review, this VN is deep af. It's award winning no doubt about that. The VN is initially based on the novel written by Yuli and then YES adapted from a bunch of vocaloid songs which are very deep and dark themed. I started playing this VN last year, so idk if the translation has been fixed by then, but for me the translation is okay I got the idea, [u]maybe what people are complaining is about the depth of this deep VN because bish it's deeper than the Mariana's Trench.[/u] This review will be written after a ton of personal research and will include, author easter eggs and such. [b]Story[/b] The story is insanely complicated, this is the VN which I personally read twice every word because its that complicated,poetic and ingenious. IT has friendship, romance, murder, psychosis, delusions basically everything like a fruit salad but it's a good salad. I first thought since this is a musical VN i shouldn't play it, because I suck at musical puzzles and cannot read notes. But, turns out there are no note based such it's more logical and memory based. The initial story is a puzzle itself I think. You follow this girl from a musical academy named LingLuo she is pretty, kind and very opiniated. She is a part of a band but she gets this weird disorder where she can't listen to music, it seems to be psychological, the whole journey starts from there. The story feels like it's between the edge of reality and fantasy, makes sense ofc when you read the whole story. The VN is pretty much psychological: gives in depth description on how our conciousness is comprised of a force that destroys you and a force that tries to protect you and how they clash. And ofc how those forces interact with your subconcious mind. [u]The VN heavily emphasizes on Freudian principles of psyche so it doesn't hurt you to like research these things beforehand if you are very confused.[/u] I was very VERY awed how much thought was put into the writing of this one. It's a real masterpiece. From the price point, this VN is not expensive at all and is worth more. The VN has 30 endings, a super secret ending as well, the secret ending makes you go wtf, IK im still analysing it and had to go to the deep ends of billibilli to figure out analysis (thank you google translation!) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2314398446 [b] Characters [/b] Ahh, serious Umineko vibes from one character which I love the most, for not being spoiler free I'm going to name her "S". Girl get yourself to umineko franchise right now! You belong with lambadelta and bernkastel, I loved her every dialogue so philosophical and poetic. She made me realize things that I never realized ngl. The other two, the guardian and inflictor are well made, I would say the author used the literature technique called personification to represent those characters, it's like how a concept like death is represented as a person basically. The ordinary characters are very basic especially Lingluo's friends of the band except the secret character. There is superb character development in the story even though the extraordinary and the ordinary ones are mixed together. [b] Gameplay[/b] Gameplay has the basics of every VN, has that fast forward and ofc my personal favorite auto mode. It involves solving logical musical puzzles which involves memory and some deductive thinking. There are still some puzzles that didn't made sense like the (classroom, piano room, hallway puzzle). But there is an insane one where you have to study all subjects, increase proficiency like a time management game. This is the most insane strategy based time management thing ever! I nearly needed a day to do it on my own for the first time, because the first time i play a VN i don't use any guides at all. It was insane. [u]So brace yourself for some insane puzzles on this one.[/u] Oh yes the other one is the loop puzzle with the guardian, when i first time played this thought the VN was broken LMAO. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2450756037 [b] Art and Music [/b] Ngl Art is well polished and beautiful, beautiful clothes, drawings and backgrounds no complaints. The music and lyrics good god, beautiful inspiring poetic lyrics (considering ofc the author is a song-writer DUH) and amazing OST's. Also the VN is fully voiced, kudos to the voice actors, especially to the one who did LL and S [b] Achievements[/b] Here is the next hardcore challenge after doing that insane exam thing, doint the achievements. This VN is deep so ngl to get the achievements I got the guide. [u]The hardest and the most confusing achievement to get is the ending 5.[/u] I HAD TO literally go through billibilli forums which are written in chinese (idk anything chinese except muyato and nihao and taxue) so I had to translate and just get the idea from the videos. Yes there is an english based guide but i found that the ending 5 is very confusing to get. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2489175981 [b] DLC - Metamorphosis? [/b] The story is so interesting and I want more,, and I know a cosplay artbook thing is on it's way, but please devs I really need the DLC of this in english PLEAAAASE. The original chinese version is available on steam so I am hoping it may be translated soon. [u]Honestly, the main game didn't finish from the secret truth ending of the story, it just raised more questions and I am still SHOOKED. [/u] [b] Author Tit-bits [/b] So if you are lucky enough to check back this review after finishing all achievements, congratz! here are some non-spoiler free easter eggs. Initially the real ending of the VN or the novel is Ending 3, but the author Yuli wanted it to be Ending 8 which is super dark of course, for some reason I still didn't get this ending, but i am assuming it's closely related to the DLC metamorphosis. Ending 0 is the real secret alternate ending, it was to be employed as the real ending of the novel but was considered super deep by the author and was reduced to be an alternative ending. The ending 0 is the literal plot twister of the twister of this whole VN, it will change everything you thought in one sentence (which is what i wrote underneath the heading of this review :D) [b] Overall [/b] Bish what can I say, if you are into very deep thinking, psychological game with a hint of drama this is the one for you. This VN is delusion within a world of delusions, so don't blame yourself if you didn't get the story for the first time. Chinese VN's are truly very epic in terms of stories with an amazing flow and complexity as well as great music. [u]What i probably like the most of this VN is the insane replay value, you can read the same thing over and over and reach new conclusions. [/u]I like to end the review with my favorite character's on the spot poetic sarcasm of the VN: [i]The helpless knight is repeating his oath, the cry from the abyss can’t reach the mourner’s ears. The moment of meeting is closer… [/i]

Please fix these localization issues. It makes it very hard to appreciate the game to it's fullest value.

EVERYTHING is amazing except for the translation, I feel like Ive waited for english version for so long just to get punch in the crotch reading the translation from a machine.