You play as Makoto, a student who never attends the lectures at the school. As a punishment, you have to attend an extra seminar on an island with other classmates. However, when you arrive on the island, strange things start happening. A girl is found dead on April 6th, with a small bell in her hand. Immediately after that, you found yourself in the bed and see the date – April 1st! Was the vision of the girl just a dream, or do you possess a power to predict events? This is what you will have to find out, as a series of strange deaths make your seminar much more suspenseful than you have thought.
From VNDB
I’ve been a huge fan of the Zero Escape series (comprising 999 and VLR, both which I’ve talked about) so it was no surprise that when I learned that the writer for this series worked on the Infinity series…I had to play them, duuh~
At first, I couldn’t even find it and then it had some errors so when I finally found a good copy of it, everything else went smoothly. I hadn’t realized how old the game was, until I saw the sprites. Sometimes they are downright ugly, or bizarre looking, and I’m okay with that, I came to accept it just like I accepted Higurashi and Umineko (or really, Ryuukishi07’s art in general which now it just has a lot of charm and I enjoy it).
I did the best route first, at least for me, which was Haruka. I suspected she wasn’t human, because she was always talking about not having a heart, but what I didn’t expect was who she was made after. I also didn’t realize this was set in the future until they started talking about the laws they had.
That’s how I like to play my games: as blind as possible. Sometimes that doesn’t happen, but if I can, I do.
Saki’s route was very meh for me and I did not really like her, ditto for Yuka. Yuka is just the typical pink-haired-chan with the big boobs, that while the story had some potential, it still didn’t impress me.
I expected more of Kurumi’s route, just because she was connected to Izumi (her sister) and the fact she had a dark past, and while it was cute and heartwarming and a step-up from S. and Y. route, I felt like it could’ve been so much better.
Now…Izumi’s route was a strange one, Izumi Curé route tried to mindfuck me, but it ended up confusing me plenty more. By the end of it, it’s an ambiguous ending, in which I felt could’ve been expanded. The twist was nice, and I felt like I was finally in the meat of the subject and of the game, but I don’t know…I liked Haruka’s route so much more, that Izumi’s route was good and just below Haruka, but didn’t impress me as much.
Definitely my fault for digging Haruka’s so much, I expected something equally great from the others and I got really letdown, by the time Curé Izumi came around I just couldn’t have the same degree of hoomph for it. Though Izumi route, the joke route, was hilarious and definitely let me on a good mood.
I was going to play the Yuka Curé route, but as soon as I realized I couldn’t save, I’m not doing it for a while. I have Ever 17 to play, so that’s that.
I used the PSP OST for the game, which I read had better quality, but still felt most themes were bland, though the mystery/whatever theme was really eerie and nice~
In the end, the game is good and it introduced some really interesting things like the Curé Syndrome, and the clones, and so on, but it failed in that some characters being bland and uninteresting (and required in order to unlock Izumi Curé) put a bit of a downer on the overall experience :V
Have you heard about this game before? Have you played it? If so, I’d love to know what you think of it!
Among the Deep 