SHUTEN ORDER

Gameplay-wise, Shuten Order is a genuinely interesting experience. Every route offers something new, and you’re constantly unraveling this tangled web of mechanics and mysteries. The visuals are incredibly cool and vibrant—a real treat for the eyes. The sound design is solid, too. But seriously, when are we going to get a genuinely new plot? Because every single time, we get just absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ at the end. This has been repeating since Danganronpa 3: first it was [spoiler] resurrecting Junko and the whole "it was a TV show" twist [/spoiler], then we got [spoiler] homunculi [/spoiler] in Master Detective File, [spoiler] homunculi [/spoiler] again in Hundred Line, and now it's these [spoiler] droids [/spoiler] in Shuten Order. Honestly, it completely ruins the overall impression of the game. Kodaka keeps writing the exact same tropes into all his recent games. It’s so frustrating because if you look at the individual pieces, there are some really great scenarios in there. Why keep beating a dead horse and doing the exact same thing over and over? For me personally, the story is the primary factor in a visual novel. Because of that, I do not recommend this game, unless you're …

going to focus on the gameplay of these routes in this review, rather than the plots. the writing is good for all of them. some of the twists for each route (not twists for the founder murder) are a bit telegraphed, but i guess that makes sense if you need to solve that mystery to progress. also not going into detail about the ending section, but there is this gimmick where you can't manually save. i'd say that the intention of making you live with the consequences of the ending isn't exactly worth the inconvenience of not being able to stop whenever, especially considering how long this part of the game can go without autosaving at times. ministry of security: there's a few puzzles but it's just alright. at least it autosaves during the stealth sections so death isn't that punishing. at one point you need to type something with the keyboard. ministry of education: there's a system where you have to maintain other girls while pursuing one but you don't have to visit them more than once a day so it's not really much of an obstacle. the arcs of the girls feel too similar to be super interesting, even if they're superficially different in personality. idk, i just prefer the…

Lolcowlization that shouldn't have seen the light of day

Incredible story. Some of the gameplay styles are a little bare bones given they don't have long with any one of them to develop it but it's still extremely rewarding. The school ministry route is kind of an awful slog but it's buried between enough above average writing and great story telling that I can ignore it.

Shuten Order, I get why people wouldn't like this game because some I would say is harder/more confusing than the others. However once you get through it, I would say the story itself is very interesting. Personally I already knew who the traitor is because I picked their route first making it obvious they were the traitor who killed the Founder. The route I enjoyed the most were yugen's route. I recommend this game because I love how there were different genres per route so its worth it.

I quite like this game overall, and although it does have a number of flaws there is an interesting story being told. The ending is overwritten and somewhat cliche, with the exposition being primarily backloaded. That can make the end feel tedious, and the game in general has a problem with tedium and repetition. A lot of this stems from the protagonist being perhaps one of the biggest pushover wimps in fiction, to an irritating degree. It's rather frustrating for them to cry about the same internal monologues over and over again, basically forced to do anything at all. The 5 routes splitting information across them seems like a gimmick, and it's not wrong to say as much, but it's also not that bad. I have frustrations with the Law route, and the Education route was silly more than anything (somewhat boring too), but the vibes created for each route were solid, and there was usually some interesting mystery to mull over during them. Ultimately, if you are used to visual novels, nothing is really out of the ordinary here - my experience reflects the genre having a tendency to be overly verbose anyways. It's not an airtight story, and not an airtight game, but its worthwhile…