When I’ve first learnt of 428: Shibuya Scramble, which wasn’t too long ago, I got incredibly interested. While I’m not a huge fan of visual novels as a genre, there have been many great examples of how to build an engaging interactive narrative among these games. And this title seemed like it had many curious concepts of its own. Multiple characters with converging storylines, similarity to the good old (actually often really bad) FMV titles from the 90s, several story genres in one game telling different sides of the story… It was only later that I’ve learnt that the game was actually originally released back in 2008 on Wii and this new port was the first non-Japan exclusive version of the game. During the first several hours I didn’t even consider this, since the game felt really smart about how it used its own mechanics and how high quality the visual side of the game was.
I was thoroughly enjoying this title for hours, fully expecting to end up praising it a lot and calling it a gem that needed everyone’s attention. But that was only halfway through the game. Then the rest of the game happened.
