I enjoy the game a lot and have fun playing it, but all the criticism people have thrown at it is completely warranted, and will leave my review as not recommended until the problems with the game are fixed.

If you don't have a relatively high-end PC don't even bother. I wasn't sure what people were talking about with the frame rate issues until I tried the game on my Steam Deck. It's pretty much unplayable. Even after lowering my graphic settings, the game was struggling to even hit 30 fps for me. It's inexcusable from a game publisher as big as BN to put out a game that feels this unoptimized, especially months after the initial release. I'm very fortunate to have a pretty good computer where I don't really have these issues, but if you're on a less powerful machine don't give the game money.

The game is also has many small, frustrating glitches that show up from time-to-time. I've noticed the CPUs sometimes taking up to a full minute to take their shots, to full graphical glitches that take up the entire screen that has me shocked they weren't noticed in the game testing. Also let's be honest, this game didn't need an Anti-cheat. I don't think anyone in the world actually likes EAC, and it may be one of the reasons why the game runs so bad in the first place. Just overall a horrible decision, and just makes it harder to recommend this to anyone.

It's really frustrating this is still the quality of the game even today, because like I mentioned, the core mechanics of the game are very fun! There's so much content here from all the different courses that all feel distinct from each other. To characters having different stats and abilities. To all the different game modes and mini-stories for every character. To different caddies to give you bonuses that you can ALSO customize. The game gives you so much freedom and creativity to play the game however you want, which is why it's so painful to make this review. It's become my new second monitor game to play while I watch videos and movies, however I can't ignore the problems the game has.

I hope HYDE and Bandai sees the criticism that the game has been receiving and makes the necessary changes, because the game itself is great, it just needed a little more time to make sure everything was optimized and polished.

I made a company called "Ubisoft" and tried to have the worst working conditions possible. For some reason it boosted my profits tenfold. 10/10, This definitely doesn't reflect real life in any way whatsoever.

I had fun but this should've just been DLC for Nirvana Initiative.

Paying $40 for less than 1/4 of the content of the other two games is a bit ridiculous. One of my favorite features of the other games was all the wacky things you could do in the somniums with alternate routes, and there's only 3 in the whole game with no branching paths. Also a lot of the "escape room" puzzles kinda frustrated me with some essential intractable parts not being labeled how they should have been.

That said, the characters and their interactions are still great. With the exception of Iris and Ota, everyone is still fantastic. Love seeing the characters from AI:NI quipping with the original game cast. Hina is also an awesome addition and fits the other characters so well. I really hope she gets a more prominent role in a future game.

As a spin-off game though it's fine, if you're a fan of this series I'd say wait until you can pick it up on sale, I'm not sure it's worth it at it's current price. I can definitely tell Uchikoshi wasn't as "hands-on" on this project as he was on the previous games (probably due to Hundred Line), but this does give me hope that there will be a more proper sequel to Nirvana Initiative at some point, since that game is practically begging for a follow-up.

I don't know man.

I gotta be doing something wrong, but I feel like the physics in this game are way too inconsistent. The momentum in this game feels arbitrary, because I can't tell what I'm doing different on each of the jumps to give me such a wildly different result.

From having played, and beat, quite a few games in this genre, this is the only one I don't think I can finish since the physics frustrate me so much.

Alright, after 100 hours I think I've absorbed enough of the game to give it a proper review.

TL;DR: The game is good, however it does have a lot of flaws. This game might've been too ambitious of an undertaking. I do think it is worth experiencing because you will get your money's worth, but I need to state the issues that I have with it.


Easily the game's strongest aspect. The story is phenomenal, as to be expected from Kodaka and Uchikoshi. It takes their weird, creative writing styles and combines them to create such a massive game with so many twists that you'll have trouble wrapping your head around all of it. And as you can tell by my playtime, it completely gripped me, at least for the prologue . I'm sure you're well aware, but the game does in fact have 100 endings, and Kodaka has stated that they are all "real" endings, and you can choose whatever route and ending you want.

This is a complete lie.

Because a couple of the routes have locks on them, making it so you can't progress that story until you've seen a different route. Also, in the case of The Killing Game Route, the choices you make on it don't lead to any branching paths, and I don't consider them "real" endings like Kodaka had said. The game kind of wants you to go down the "main" route first instead of trying to explore all the other endings the game has to offer. And with how many different endings and routes are in the game, it's nearly impossible to know exactly which routes you need to go down to get the "true" ending without a guide.

In addition, because the downtime between each route is varied, sometimes you will go days, if not weeks in game without experiencing anything new happening with the story. For example, the Killing Game has nearly no downtime whatsoever, with everyday feeling like something new is happening, and it easily became one of my favorite routes. Whereas the comedy route is nearly all downtime, and it really starts to make the game drag.

However, despite all of that, I think the story alone is worth picking up the game for. It's so engaging, and when you find a good route, it is good. The Slasher Route is probably my favorite so far.

The gameplay is similar to most grid-based SRPG's such as Fire Emblem. However, rather than advancing your units forward to finish off a specific enemy, you're mostly staying back defending your base from invaders. And with the more defensive gameplay, you have a lot of defensive options to help your units in the front lines. And it is a very interesting and unique take on the SRPG style, at least for the first half of the game.

The most noteworthy aspect of this system is the "voltage" mechanic, where once the meter fills up to 100% you can unleash a massive attack, or use it to play support for your units. Voltage completely breaks the game and lets you cheese nearly every single battle. Because the Voltage attacks do so much damage, you can just spam a move that gives you a ton of voltage, and just fire it off, because depending on how much you've upgraded your weapon you'll get it back within 4 moves anyways. And since you can store 300% of Voltage at once, you can just wait until the boss shows up and just b-line them until you win.

This is made even easier by Nozomi's healing ability and the Desperation Potion, letting you recover immediately after using a Voltage attack and giving you Voltage for free. All of my battles at this point involve using Desperation Potions on my allies, letting them die to gain a ton of Voltage, and using Nozomi and Takumi to just bulldoze nearly every other enemy. It's really dumb, but it gives me an easy S-rank on every battle even if it doesn't feel right to do. I'm not sure this strategy was intentional or not from the devs, but it's hard not to see it when nearly every aspect of the combat system kinda incentives you to use these cheesy mechanics.

Last thing: I really hate having to wait for more enemies to spawn in to finish waves. In every other SRPG, once you kill all the enemies, you just win that wave. You don't have to wait for more enemies to spawn in order to finish the battle, especially since you'll probably just wipe them out immediately anyways. It feels like unnecessary time padding for battles, in a game that is already unfathomably long.


Oh boy...here we go...

I don't like the characters in this game. There are a few that I absolute love like Takemaru, Eito, Hiruko, and Takumi. But for the most part, this is one of my least favorite casts in any Kodaka game. I think they tried to make a majority of the cast into comic relief and it does not work for me whatsoever. Darumi's whole character is being a Danganronpa fan. That's it. She's always throwing out pop culture references and talks about starting a "killing game," and it gets old within the first hour of the game. There's also Shouma, who self-deprecates on literally every single line of dialogue, Ima who's dedication to his sister is nearly at a sickening degree, or Gaku who acts like a whiny brat for a majority of the game.

I know Kodaka's games aren't known for having characters that are "realistic" or anything like that, but the characters here are so unlikable to the point that it really starts to drag down the experience.


Another one of my big complaints comes with the sound design. Now I'm not talking about the music, done by the absolute legend Masafumi Takada, who once again knocks it out of the park for the soundtrack of the game. Even doing a rock remix of the daily life theme that literally only plays during day 69. He once again does a phenomenal job.

I'm more so talking about the English voice dub of the game. From what I'm aware, most of the English casting was done by relatively newer voice actors, which I am all for newer people in the industry a chance to shine. The problem is I feel like some of the voice actors don't do justice to the characters or dialogue. For example, Kyoshika's voice actor sounds robotic and stiff when delivering their lines, dragging down some emotional moments or parts in battle where she attacks.

And as other people have mentioned, the grunts and sighs after every line is a big problem. Honestly, I didn't even notice it until it was pointed out, but once I have I can't un-hear them. So much so that I know there's a patch already to remove it. Once you notice how much of it there is, it becomes the only thing you hear and I can see it getting on people's nerves quickly.


Gonna make this one short. The art is still really good, just like every Kodaka game, with some beautiful, stylized sprites and CGs that are genuinely gorgeous to look at. Not to mention some very well done 3D animated cut scenes that look so good, and fit so well with the stylized graphics in the game.

With that, the game runs perfectly on Steam Deck. I have not experienced any frame drops at all, and the image is beautiful. You should be able to play this game fine on pretty much anything. Even on my awful, barely functioning laptop it's able to run so I don't think you'll have any problems playing it.


I know I've been complaining a lot in this review. But I do genuinely still think it's worth playing. Kodaka and Uchikoshi are creative geniuses, and I think this game shows how talented they are as game directors. That said: I think this game was way too ambitious of an undertaking for them, and the cracks show the longer I play it. It's no wonder this game took nearly a decade to complete, because there's so much here. Just wish it could've been polished up a lot more, since the potential the game has is so palpable.