Forgotten Trace: Thanatos in Nostalgia

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7520163/]You can find hundreds of other reviews through our Curator page[/url] [h1]"Several steps off the Trace"[/h1] Forgotten Trace: Thanatos in Nostalgia bounces all over the place in almost every aspect of its design. At its best, it’s a captivating supernatural mystery revolving around unlikely teenage suicides who shake off life-altering disabilities just long enough to kill themselves. At its worst, it’s a painful slice of life comedy that will often present what could be an amusing premise or idea, then works spectacularly hard to drive it into the ground. The wackier aspects of Trace noticeably exist for grander reasons than to provide a cheap chuckle, but as a way to explore the main characters from different angles - which is good. Only they make that point, and then they keep going. Dragging out and repeating it over and over, like a [s]reviewer[/s] school child who has to write a 2,000-word essay but finds themselves tapped out at half that. There are passages in Trace that feel like they may never end and you slowly come to accept that this is your life now, reading about high school girls with boob envy verbally jousting …

Visual novel with a plot of convoluted mix of different stories that do not gel together. The beginning feels like a slice of school life, progressing to some sort of supernatural stories meshed together that are poorly explained and developed and ends on a non-ending. There are some funny moments here and there, and some dark moments there and here, but overall, it is a very slow and boring read, compounded by the overly long text lines that add little to the story. Artwork is decent enough, though basic, and some of the character sprites/CGs do look weird at times. The music is unremarkable and of little variety, and long stretches of the game has no music at all. The only thing remotely worth reading and looking at was the Sunday's side story. Overall, I do not recommend. The only reason I have 40+ hours on this novel is due to how slow and long the story is. Avoid. 5/10

So it's a completely normal story about the life of a group of high school students and then suddenly [serious spoilers ahead] [spoiler] turns out everyone is actually from a different family of space aliens and must fight each other to death for reasons????? None of this makes any sense whatsoever. [/spoiler] Guess we'll never find out because this is an incomplete novel and the sequel does not exist yet. Will it ever? Who knows.

Sadly, this might've been the worst first impression I've ever had starting any VN, ever. After a dragged out prologue, the opening sequence played and I found out that if I played the game with full screen on, all cutscenes flicker like they're trying to send epilectics to the hospital. The window mode was too big for my screen and the bottom of the screen got cut off, and I couldn't change the window size to fix that. The scene following the opening sequence was a "comedy" scene where MC's friend had apparently broken into MC's house with some random woman to have an ONS and then had me read through 10 minutes of absurd lies as to why that wasn't MC's house without MC defending himself. Then an annoying typical imouto-character barged in and acted like a 7 year old girl for another 10 minutes. After that I just gave up on the VN and put it on skip mode to get the rest of the achievements.

The text is excruciatingly slow for absolutely no reason. This game would be so short if you could move through dialogue at a normal pace.

Forgotten Trace: Thanatos in Nostalgia is a narrative-focused visual novel developed by Almaz and published by Fruitbat Factory. Built around mystery, romance, and psychological drama, the game emphasizes storytelling over interactive mechanics, inviting players to immerse themselves in an emotionally charged journey where memories, dreams, and reality gradually intertwine. Rather than relying on constant action, it succeeds by creating a slow-burning atmosphere filled with suspense and emotional uncertainty. From its opening moments, the game establishes a haunting tone that encourages players to uncover the truth behind its many unanswered questions while becoming invested in the lives of its characters. The story follows Nanami Kazuya, whose aspirations have been shattered by circumstances beyond his control and whose chronic knee injury has left him emotionally and physically exhausted. His ordinary life changes dramatically after finding himself in a mysterious snow-covered forest where his pain suddenly disappears. There he encounters a beautiful young woman who seems to know him despite the fact that he has no recollection of ever meeting her. This mysterious introduction s…