I have a lot of fond memories of choosing your own adventure novels, and to be honest, most modern visual novels are a bit of a let down by the end. I’ve rarely had the chance to sit down with a really good visual novel in recent years, and I’m happy to say that ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is an exception. While I found the narrative to be missing initially, the story will be selected when you step into the second battle. By the end of my first run through, I was so preoccupied with the story that I wanted to go back and experience some of the other endings. This is our ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos review.
MyDearest Inc. claims that ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos has 15 to 20 hours of gameplay. First, let’s get something out of the way and make it clear that this is not a game. It is a visual novel experience and if you purchase this product for a gaming experience you will be disappointed. The next thing you have as a mech operator for the gameplay loop is touching buttons in an activation sequence, placing your hands / arms in the specified location, and pulling a trigger to activate a weapon. I also found that the most enjoyable way to experience the story was to grab a seat in a comfortable chair with my Oculus Quest 2 and move the guard area to a stationary position.
In this VR VN (Visual Novel) you take on the role of Chloe, a genetically engineered human pilot of a Makhia (combat robot), and defend the remains of the world against the Meteora, aliens that are 400 meters tall. I found the initial experience a bit incoherent as the story didn’t anchor me very well in the world. Thankfully, once you start interacting with the rest of your team, this goes away. Each of the characters from Noa, the AARC (Artificial Augmented Reality Crystal) to General Deiter, is interesting in its own way. As you start making more narrative choices, the different character-specific stories sometimes come as a surprise. While some of the character names may sound silly to some, they go well with an anime, and the voice actors did an excellent job of bringing these characters to life. After a while they didn’t bother me at all.
Narrator overall is excellent, I enjoyed most of the characters, and Julie (the resident mad scientist) in particular was well done. I found that the verbal interplay between Chloe and Julie was the highlight of my run every time. I admit that I only played through with the English voices. Because of this, some nuances of the story elements may have been lost in the translation. The only complaint I have is the voice, which sometimes feels stilted and clicks through every sentence. It took me a little bit out of the immersive experience, but I can see how difficult it would be extremely difficult to get this element just right in a VN where there are so many stops and starts for dialogue.
The music / sound for an anime VN is almost perfect in ALTDEUS. It goes very well with any battle sequence and other moments in history. It does a great job of building a fight. Unfortunately, due to the lack of gameplay, I found each fight a bit disappointing in the end. Just a bit of a mini gameplay loop would have kept me a lot more busy and paid a bigger payout at the end of each fight instead of just having a timer that you can beat by pressing the buttons.
Graphics and graphics for this VN are clean / clear. Most of the environments are visually interesting, yet sparse, so you can quickly find objects to interact with and move the story around. The character animations are well done for what is in the overall main narrative. However, a number of events occur when the screen goes black. For example, if a character is hit the screen will go black, you will hear the slap too, and Chloe may see her lying on the floor. It would have been nice to see these events fully animated throughout the story.
The ALTDEUS narrative is well done with an in-game construct known as the Decision Support System (DSS). Every time Chloe has to make a narrative decision, the DSS steps in and shows you the impact each decision has on things like the partnership rating with Noa or how mysterious Chloe is as a character. I can already see how I would make different decisions on future runs after having regretted some of my decisions early on.
ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is an excellent VN for those who like anime. It has a lot of the traditional anime tropes with well-done voice overs and great music. While a single pass is short, the total rendering value including branch narration is high. The story may be a little slow and incoherent at the beginning, but it switches quickly depending on your narrative choices. If you want to avoid some of my initial little disappointments I would recommend two things: firstly – realize that this is not a game but a well-made VR visual novel, secondly – visit altdeus.com beforehand. There you can quickly read about the world setting and characters. That way, from the first opening sequence, you can be grounded and invested in the story.
Game copy made available for verification purposes.
COMPARE WITH: Tokyo Chronos (VR)
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