Tokyo Chronos is a Japanese visual novel that occurs in the Chronos World. It gives off mystery vibes from the start: ‘Who is dead’? You have to solve that in order to escape that world (the MC plus his childhood friends).
Now, is there any feature that inextricably ties Tokyo Chronos and VR together, such that it would not work if it were on a PC, or console? It’s a no, to be honest. That alone might cause people to deduct points. Still, having finally but only recently reached the ending despite having owned the game for so long, I think I found it satisfactory++ overall.
You have to make choices in this game, which I gather is pretty normal for visual novels (not that much experience with them). However, there aren’t a whole lot of choices to make! In the inaugural playthrough, it’s literally impossible for you to finish the game! There’s one choice for you to make in chapter four (I got it correct) and one choice for you to make in the last chapter, but it ain’t technically a choice because there’s only one option! It leads you to a bad end too!
In order to complete the game, you’ll have to finish it again in what they call re-chapters. These happen from the perspective of all the side characters rather than the MC. There, you’ll get to make one choice for each side character or something like that. Each will either lead to a bad end or continue the story. And when you’ve unlocked all the bad ends, only then will the alternative choice in the ending chapter be available! This is kinda weird for me since I would have preferred to complete everything in one go without making any wrong choices. That’s usually how it goes, right? It’s also more satisfying that way, the test of the intuition.
Whatever. Next, it falls down to how satisfied I am with the story. To be honest, I was pretty much not so interested in the first half of the story. However, after the choice that I made in chapter 4, everything seemed to get pretty interesting and fast-paced and I was hyped to get to the end! I’m not sure if this is just me or others had similar experiences, though. Err, I must admit that I didn’t actually do playthrough 2 – I was impatient and went on Youtube to see the real ending. To be honest, it was not that far off from my predictions. But I must say, it was pretty heartwarming, while a little cliched. The right answer was so evocative. Now, if I have time, I’ll probably go and see the second playthrough through for real. I missed the side characters and their perspectives (the majority) and maybe they’d make things all fit together nicer. Now, I actually didn’t know at the time that I needed to play the re-chapters to get the answers – I played the normal chapters again a bit and nothing was different! At first, I naturally went back to that save file and tried looking for a different option but it just wasn’t there. After that I Googled and found that I needed another! playthrough, but didn’t know that it was in those re-chapters or something like that. Meh. Communication failure…
I must say that the backstory behind the Chronos World is pretty cool. Now, the second VR VN by the same company was released January this year. I bought it. It is apparently more interactive than the previous, and is said to be a sequel to it, I heard. This should be pretty apparent from its name: Altdeus: Beyond Chronos. It’s rated 4.8 stars in the Oculus Store with rave reviews (90% 5 stars which is crazy). Ok, maybe it’s not a sequel. Still, it seems it’s crazy good with multiple storylines branching out. Okay, rather than completing a second playthrough for Tokyo Chronos, I’ll definitely try this out properly if I have the time. From the reviews, it’s like awesome…
Ok done. Bye! This was the fourth game I bought, Tokyo Chronos.
Update: Ultimately, I still believe the ideal visual novel is one where you can theoretically complete the whole thing in one playthrough without being set up! to fail. You should replay it by choice to see additional stuff, not because you got no choice. Of the two I may prefer the former game because for me simplicity > complicated.