No Recollection

No Recollection is not a game, it's an e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?". When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game. This is your usual high school anime club dropout fan-fiction and yes, wouldn't you know, this fan-fiction is all about the authors favourite topic of all, his imaginary girlfriend. There's a backstory about waking up in a building with amnesia (the protagonist has amnesia, not the building). This Choose-Your-Own-Adventure e-book has a $2 DLC, the author wants you to give him money then he will show you some pictures of his imaginary anime girlfriend/waifu. I couldn't find a better way to describe how incredibly cringey this whole thing is... but cringe is par for the course when it comes to these anime fan-fiction e-books here on Steam. Thi…

After having spent over 13 hours with this game, sadly I can't say I'd recommend it. I hate to diss what is clearly someone's passion project, but it simply isn't worth the amount of time it takes to complete. It took 5 hours before the story really got going, and once it did, you could see most plot points a mile away. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that each story beat is painfully dragged out. Pros: -good music (although it seems it was not made by the dev. still, good choices) -story had enough going on to make me stay til the end, although at that point it was more of a sunk-cost fallacy - !! apollo justice mentioned !! Cons: -bad pacing. It takes forever for anything to happen, and the protag repeats himself A LOT. I do not need to hear about the dining floor's color scheme every time he's there - [spoiler]giving the murderer character DID is at best lazy, and at worst offensive to those with DID[/spoiler] - [spoiler]others have noted this already, but Jane's SA was not handled well. It seemed more like a cheap excuse to have her kill people rather than an incredibly serious, life-changing event. Not to mention, the protag's reaction to it shows a lot…

Everything is ten times longer than necessary, all previous reviews are right about everything, whatever. Just skip anything that isn't dialogue and you'll be fine, honestly once I got into the right rhythm I was pretty into the plot! It's one deep rewrite from being good. There are even some ideas. DID and clones, interesting stuff! Too bad no one ever connects the dots, and everyone focuses on erasing memories instead (which could be interesting too, the writing is just too surface-level to exploit it) Weirdly I think the visuals aren't as lazy as they seem, there's still a number of sprites that weren't strictly necessary, and while nothing looks good, I appreciate the effort that went into everything. The side characters are nice (even if MC disagrees, they are, at least, coherent and fleshed-out) and I wish the game treated them better, Jane specifically - she's the least interesting, but that's no reason the maker her The Love Interest And Nothing More, she's forced into the role the moment she appears and ends in the exact same place. Born sexy yesterday, VN edition. That was the review, now let me vent about the MC lest I implode. (At least he wasn't boring though, I'll gi…

[h1]No Recollection — 0.5h played | 23/23 achievements | “Psychological horror” with the budget of a broken pencil[/h1] [quote][b]TL;DR[/b] — Steam Deck playable, short, multiple endings… and still not worth your time. Weak writing, ugly art, cheap audio, and the usual “wake up / amnesia / shady dorm / nobody can be trusted” routine.[/quote] [b]No Recollection[/b] is the kind of visual novel you’ve already played without playing it: you wake up somewhere you shouldn’t be, there’s a dorm vibe, a bunch of suspicious people, and the game tries to sell you a mystery with a [i]big twist[/i]. Except the “mystery” feels like a checklist, not a story. Everyone acts like they’re auditioning for “Trust Issues: The Anime”, and the whole thing leans on the classic “don’t trust anyone” loop without bringing anything new to the table. Visually, it’s rough. The character art looks like “anime style… but on a bad day” (think cheap, stiff, uneven). The backgrounds are hand-drawn in a way that doesn’t read as “artistic choice” so much as “someone tried.” I get the intention, but the result feels amateur and inconsistent, which kills immersion fast—especially in a game that relies almost entirely …

Intriguing story.

xD