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A Small Town’s Mysterious Summer Vacation - A review of WORLD END SYNDROME
I just recently finished a game (or visual novel if you want to be pedantic) called World End Syndrome. I’m going to ramble about it now.
For some context, World End Syndrome is a visual novel that was published by Arc System Works in the May of last year. I’d classify the genre as a Mystery/Romance with some light horror elements. It tells the story of its 17 year main protagonist (named by the player) as he moves to a small town called Mihate in the summer, where every 100 years undead beings called Yomibito appear. After joining a Mystery/Tribal Studies club he then lives out his summer vacation, haunted by the memories of his tragic past. That’s just the backstory though as most of your time spent in Mihate will actually be spent in what I’d best describe as a Dating Sim with the actual mystery/horror being saved for the various endings and two specific routes.
Yeah, I know. It’s a dating sim and that can be a bit of a turn off, but hear me out!
First off, I’ll just get the gameplay out of the way. It’s a visual novel so the “gameplay” is non-existent. The closest thing to gameplay would be picking who to spend time with and occasionally choosing dialogue options. Like I said though, it’s a visual novel so somewhat nothing gameplay is just part of the experience. With that out of the way though, there is still a general “gameplay” loop that you end up following in WES. You start your day off, pick a location on the game’s map, and you then spend time with whoever it is happens to be there. Rinse and repeat until you reach an ending. This is where the problems start to creep up however. (With some exceptions) You simply have no way of knowing where everyone is during these sections on your first go of each in-game day. The game will keep track of everywhere you’ve been and who was there even if you reload your save or start a new file, which will allow you to effectively save-scum your way to victory but doing that gets tedious FAST. Another decent idea would be to look up a guide, but the game is relatively obscure so there are very few guides to use online. (I used this one: https://knoef.info/trophy-guides/ps4-guides/world-end-syndrome/)
The game is split into 5 (technically 6) routes, one for each of the main girls (Maimi Kusunose, Saya Kamishiro, Hanako Yamada, Yukino Otonashi, and Miu Amana) and one true ending. You can spend time with whoever you want, but you will need to spend most of your time with just one of the girls in order to get anything but the game’s worst ending. Do things right though, and you’ll get one of the girls’ endings which (usually) involves them falling for the MC. I DID mention that this was a dating sim, didn’t I? Whatever, once you get all 5 girls’ endings, you unlock the true ending which can just be triggered by going back to title screen and starting a new save.
This however is where my biggest complaint with WES pops up. One thing the game COMPLETELY neglects to tell you is that doing the character’s routes out of order can potentially soft-lock your file by locking you out of the other routes, forcing you to have to wipe the game’s save data completely. In particular, in my first run I did Hanako’s route first but when I restarted the game, I couldn’t get the other girl’s events to trigger until I reinstalled the game. It can be frustrating, but its avoidable by just doing them in this order: Saya, Maimi, Hanako, Yukino, and then Miu.
Admittedly, I could’ve just been doing things wrong and there might be a way to do the rest of the game’s routes without wiping your save data, but my second playthrough (where I did things in the above listed order and used a guide) went perfectly so that’s neither here nor there.
I’ve been selling the game kinda short though, so onto the parts of it that I actually liked: the graphics and the narrative.
One thing you’ll notice right off the bat, this game is GORGEOUS. The character designs have a very distinct anime style that I absolutely adore, they can look a little off at times (in particular, Rei Nikaido’s right arm almost looks like it’s bending the wrong way, and the character’s mouths tend to do the Sonic thing where the entire mouth is only on one side of their face when viewed from a side profile) but in general they look REALLY good. The game’s backgrounds also have a hand-painted style that compliments the game’s otherworldly atmosphere excellently.
I’ll just put it here since I didn’t know where else to put it, but I should mention that the game’s music is… Ok, I guess. It isn’t anything to write home about, but it serves the mood and atmosphere decently enough.
Now onto the narrative.
For one thing, the actual mystery that serves as a backdrop for the game’s plot is a decent one. An astute player could potentially put the proper pieces together before a lot of the actual reveals, and someone who isn’t paying as much attention as them could be in for some interesting surprises. However the way its presented is fairly linear with the game not really giving the player any way to solve the mystery themselves and just kind of spoon-feeding it to you as you do the various girls’ routes. I’d rank the game as a 6.5/10 in the mystery department.
If you’re looking for horror though (as some of the game’s marketing and its prologue might lead you to believe) skip this game. Ultimately the game’s “horror” just amounts to the fact that there’s undead creatures involved and (MILD SPOILERS) that there’s a murderer on the loose. (END OF SPOILERS) Over all, a lot of the game’s creepier bits only come from the game’s atmosphere and its prologue/endings (minus the true ending). This is especially prevalent in that once the mystery itself starts to be unraveled (MILD SPOILERS I GUESS BUT NOT ACTUALLY) a majority of the creepier parts of the narrative are justified and given incredibly non-creepy explanations. (END OF THE NOT ACTUAL SPOILERS)
However, like I said at the start the mystery surrounding the town of Mihate, the Yomibito, and the horrors there in are simply a backdrop for a good majority of the game, with the main focus being put onto the game’s characters and in particular their (for the most part) romances with the main character. In the romance department I’d rate it at a 6/10. Most of the girls’ routes have a few very sweet moments and are over-all engaging, but a couple of them (in my opinion) fall flat. In particular Maimi and Saya. For one thing, Maimi is the MC’s distant cousin which I can see being a bit of a turn off for a few people. The romance itself was also just not that compelling, even discounting the whole cousins thing. Saya’s fared slightly better, but I found the family drama surrounding her far more compelling than any romance with her could’ve fared. They also felt the need to point out that she’s specifically only 15 which put basically any fan-service including her into the “gross” pile for me.
Oh yeah, I guess I should probably mention the fan-service. This being a dating sim and all, there is a decent amount of glamour shots of the game’s various girls in skimpy clothing (swimsuits 95% of the time since it takes place over a summer vacation) or in compromising situations and suggestive poses. There’s no nudity or anything explicitly sexual, but it’s worth mentioning because of the fact that the game’s cast is mostly made up of teenagers, so that could easily creep a good number of people out.
With that in mind I’d still say the actual story being told here is a good one. The characters are engaging (albeit with only as much depth as a decent JRPG or your average Shonen battle anime), their dynamic is entertaining, and like I said before the mystery being unraveled is at least a decent one. The game also devotes a good chunk of it’s time to world building, allowing Mihate Town to feel just a little bit more fleshed out than you’d think. The message the game ends on (that no matter how much hardship you might endure, life is still worth living) is also incredibly sweet. I also like that despite its name and all of its talk of “the world’s end” the story is actually relatively small scale with no worlds actually being in explicit danger or anything like that. It’s just a small town’s somewhat mysterious summer vacation. (Then again, there WAS a rather blatant sequel hook in the true ending and the sequel, named World End Phenomenon, was just recently announced so that small scale could inevitably change once that comes out, but I digress) I’d rank the narrative over all (rather than just the pieces of it) a solid 7/10.
If you enjoy Visual Novels, and don’t mind the slight horror elements or the fact that it’s going to spend most its 20-30 hour run-time on high-school romance, I’d give World End Syndrome at least a look. It’s available on the PS4, and the Switch.
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