Steins;Gate is basically the most popular vn into the SciAdv thing, it´s one of the most popular vn´s out there too thanks to its anime adaptation which is great to be honest. I finally completed Steins;Gate once again and I realized that it´s better than I remembered, like way better; playing it again made me realize that the anime is way inferior compared to the visual novel. Steins;Gate has many games, even a ¨remaster-remake¨ called Elite, which is the same visual novel but instead of cg, you are able to play with the anime scenes, I´d recommend to skip Elite since it lacks content and the cool artistic style isn´t there, just play the original game.
Steins;Gate relates the story of Okabe Rintaro, a 19 years old self proclaimed Mad Scientist who studies at college, he has a laboratory which is more like a club to be honest, he and his friends make by mistake a time travel machine through a microwave, as these people keep using the time machine irresponsibly, an organization will track them, it´s kind of hard to say what Steins;Gate is about because the story is full of plot twists so the less you know about the plot, the better. When playing Steins;Gate I could notice that the game emphasize that time traveling is godlike power and such, trying to be a God just leds to bad consequences.
As I said, Steins;Gate is a visual novel but it has a game mechanic as Chaos;Head Noah and Chaos;Child, the best part of it is that it doesn´t sucks, I love you guys, but your delusional trigger game mechanic fucking sucks. Alright, instead of delusions, Okabe Rintaro will have a phone, we can check our emails, calls, contacts...the stuff you are supposed to do with a phone. First of all, what I like about this game mechanic is that it doesn´t feel intrusive at all, you´ll receive emails from your friends, but it´s up to you whether you want to answer or even to reading them, you can call your friends whether the game allows you to and that´s it, to the left side of the screen you´ll be able to see when a emails or call reaches you.
The whole game can get pretty inmersive thanks to its game mechanic, I really felt like a person, reading emails and answering calls from your friends, that´s actually fun, they can be just stuff and some other times you can get cool or important texts that will tell you about certain characters of the game, how and when you answer to these characters can affect your playthrough actually, and endings of the games. I´m not that kind of person who reads text when around with other people and that´s something I did while playing Steins;Gate without even noticing; there is this part of the game when you are talking to certain character, it happens that you receive a lot of messages at once, I personally didn´t read any of them because I was -like a said- talking to a certain character, it amazed me that this character said ¨well, at least you´ve got your manners¨, that was pretty cool ngl.
As past entries in the series, Steins;Gate is a slow paced visual novel, I´d say it takes 30 hours to reach the point when the narrative goes wild, or maybe 20 hours, what I´m trying to say is that you gotta be patient to enjoy this game, the story flows at its own pacing, there are things happening out there but they are not that interesting, however, in its defense, I´ll say I found Steins;Gate not to be as slow paced as the Chaos series which is a lot to say. I spent 4-5 hours in Chaos; Head Noah´s prologue, I spent 1 hour in Steins;Gate´s prologue, by the way, it´s a shorter game as well, I personally remembered it as a longer game, not that I mind.
As everyone knows, making a time travel story is no easy feat, it´s pretty complicated, the idea of making a time travel machine through a microwave might sound stupid at first sight, but the way they manage to make everything to have sense is amazing, the story uses a lot of theories about time travel, real complicated time travel theories about wormholes, blackholes, paradoxes, things you wouldn´t get that easily. There is a part of the game where the protagonist debates agaisn´t certain character about if time travel is indeed possible or not, the way how they talk about these complicated theories is mind blowing. When the characters talk about this stuff, they usually get into psychological stuff about how time travel can affect your mind and brain or philosophical about the concept of personality, it´s really interesting stuff to read.
What are my final thoughts about on Steins;Gate? Well...I had agreat time playing it, I laughed a lot! I didn´t want to finish it and that might tell you whenever I liked it or not, I consider it has a great narrative, really great lore and how the game connects everything with the time travel theories but I don´t know, I still preffer Chaos;Head Noah and Chaos;Child, I honestly think Steins;Gate is kind of weak compared to them you know. The characters of Steins;Gate are funny, there is a lovely chemistry between, it´s cool to see them interacting and some of them has a small background but that´s it, Daru is funny but cringy sometimes, there is nothing remarkable about him, I love Mayuri but she has no personality and Makise Kurisu is fine but nothing too great, however, the interactions between the protagonist and Kurisu feels human, they have a great chemistry.
Whenever you like Steins;Gate or the Chaos series more is about taste, it´s a little unfair to compare them to be honest, Steins;Gate is more about the journey, the Chaos series is more about the characters. Nishijou Takumi is better written than Okabe, Miyashiro Takuru is a masterpiece of a protagonist and makes Okabe to see even worse and many characters from the Chaos series are more interesting to me than the ones from Steins;Gate...but, Steins;Gate has a beautiful journey that it´s hard to forget; while the Chaos series is more psychological horror focused, Steins;Gate isn´t and that´s not a bad thing. I´d really like to talk more about Steins;Gate but every single damn thing is spoiler territory and as I said, it´s better to play/watch it when you know less about it.
In summary:
Steins;Gate>>>>>Steins;Gate Elite and Steins;Gate (anime)
Chaos;Head Noah and Chaos;Child>>>>>>>>>>>Steins;Gate.
All of the screenshots were taken by me
