Mages Inc.’s Newest Mystery Novel CHAOS; CHILD is out on PC

By GeekyGamerGirl87

Some people have their comic books. Some people enjoy reading Manga. I myself Have a soft spot for visual novels. To me, I feel that a visual novel Is like an interactive manga or A graphic novel. Last year, When I began writing for the daily gamepad.com One of the first reviews that I was Given to write was actually a visual novel From this Say developer and publisher. That visual novel Was called steins gate zero And I was absolutely in love with it. Therefore, When I was asked to cover a new visual novel by this company, I was completely thrilled.  Chaos;Child Is a new visual novel developed by Mages Inc. and published by Spike Chunsoft Co. Ltd.  I was really excited to read this visual novel as I felt they did a very great job with the last one. Before I go into my review of the visual novel, I would like to thank both the developer and the publisher for providing thedailygamepad.com a free review copy of this visual novel. It is due to their generosity that I am able to write this review for your reading pleasure.

As always, I like to try to keep the story To a bare minimum as this is a visual novel. For those of you who are not familiar with visual novels, a visual novel is essentially a Manga that allows you to interact with the pages. To make things simpler think of it as a graphic novel that is in color format and available for you to read at the comfort of your computer with added bonuses.  I thought the story for CHAOS;CHILD was excellent. However, I would like to warn you that the game does have a bit of gore in it. When I say a bit of gore, it does show blood in the novel, but it doesn’t show the actual acts of why the blood happened to begin with. Therefore, If you can stomach a bit of blood then you will not be disappointed by the story of the novel.

The novel starts us off on November 6, 2009. In the town of Shibuya, there was an earthquake that was a 7.8 magnitude that occur right underneath the city.  This earthquake did have casualties of 3851 deaths and injuries of 30,927 people.  After the earthquake occurred there were a lot of things that people did not understand about the earthquake besides that it took so many lives and cause so many injuries.  One of the things being that particularly the children who were driven mad by the tragedy of the earthquake began to show signs of violence but in the past they never did. These children later became to be known as children who suffered from the Chaos Child Syndrome. After some time the city gets rebuilt and they build it to withstand earthquakes so that this doesn’t happen again.  Also, another thing is that there are now security cameras everywhere to ensure the safety of  the people. However, rumors about the earthquake started to circulate. The rumors are how In the earthquake did not make sense because there were no aftershocks. Another rumor being the damage spread in a strange way as towns near the area had few casualties. A lot of the survivors seem to agree with the rumors And said things such as I saw a white light and that they heard a sound like a ringing in their ears and that’s just the prologue to the novel.

The actual story takes place six years after the earthquake. Six years after the earthquake a young man named  Takuru Miyashiro, our main character, begins to notice that events that happened six years ago around the time of the earthquake are happening again. The story mainly focuses on Takuru who the president of the newspaper club is and who seems to be a little socially awkward. He considers himself to be a right-sider meaning he can use communications and technology to gather more information. He appears to be a logical thinker, but also has a love for a magazine called Cool Cat Press that is sort of a man’s magazine to help men get the ladies. The other main characters are Serika Onoe his childhood friend, Itou  Shinji Itou another high school newspaper reporter, who also considers himself a right-sider, Nono Kurusu, the first student council president of the new school whom everyone loves and is the vice president of the newspaper club, Masashi Kawahara, vice president of the student council who doesn’t seem to like Takuru, because he is always taking up Nono’s time. In addition to these events that are happening, there are people who have special abilities to make their delusions into a reality who have begun manifesting their powers. The story mainly revolves around Takuru and his way of getting to the bottom of what is going on in the city.  However, there are so many plot twists in the novel that it will leave you wanting more.

As stated, I do not want to give too much of the story away as I want it to be respectful to the developer and publisher and I try to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible.  All I can say is I was hooked to this story from the very beginning. The opening story was very relatable. I more so connected with it because as I am a streamer myself, and what happens to that streamer is without a doubt shock value.

When it came to the controls of the game, I was a little bit confused. In the game, you can use both controllers as well as keyboard and mouse. However, The controller sometimes does not work well on the PC. I will admit that even the Keyboard and Mouse were a little difficulty.   In the beginning, I was not a fan of even the keyboard and mouse controls. This is due to the reason that they had a lot of different commands for you to remember in order to navigate. However, I did find out (by accident) that by pressing the numeral one key It puts all those controls Into one menu making it A lot easier to navigate the novel. I think that by having it show the advanced controls It might scare people off.

Therefore, I would have liked to been told beforehand.   In fact, it would be nice to have that show up In in the visual novel  as a hint. Speaking of tips, just like in their last novel they have a dictionary that will tell you about the highlighted words in the novel. It is helpful as some of the words I was unfamiliar with and so reading the dictionary helped to give better context to the story. You can access this dictionary by either hitting F4 on the keyboard or in the system menu screen by using the number one key.

Another feature I enjoyed was the auto text feature. I liked it because you can set it up for the pages to turn without you hitting the enter key or clicking the mouse. I will admit though, there was a bit of confusion with the auto text because as I turned it to the max, the pages still didn’t move as fast as I would have liked for them to move. However, it was still a nice feature so that while I was eating, I could sit back and enjoy the novel.

For those of you who like to collect achievements;  you will be glad to know that CHAOS;CHILD does have thirty-four achievements for you to collect. As this is a visual novel, it is a very relaxing way to add more achievements to your achievement hunter quest. For those of us who enjoy collecting trading cards (As I like to collect them when a game is interesting to me) you will also be happy to know that CHAOS;CHILD does have trading cards. There are a total of six trading cards in the game. The way that the trading cards work on Steam is that you will get so many trading cards from your playthrough and will have to ask others for the remaining of the trading cards.

Overall, I can say that I highly recommend CHAOS;CHILD . Especially for those who are looking for a great crime mystery novel, with a bit of science fiction thrown in. If you are a manga fan this is highly recommended for you as well.  Even if you are not looking for a manga but want a great story; this visual novel will have you guessing at every turn and keep you on the edge of your seat. Again, the controls for keyboard and mouse do take some time to get used to, but once you get used to them you will have a really good read on your hands. If you would like to read CHAOS;CHILD  for yourself you can pick it up on Steam for $34.99 USD.