TOKYO CHRONOS

Definitely pick this up if you like visual novels, story is somewhat predictable and characters feel pretty cliche it was still a nice read.

This game is purely a Visual Novel/ADV game through and through with the added novelty of it being a VR game. If you're a stranger to these type of games, the only gameplay here is read, choose a story path, and more reading. For anyone that doesn't want to read or wanting more gameplay than that, unless you're interested with the premise of the story, I'm afraid that this game will not be to your taste. Treat these types of games as a book instead of a traditional game.

Synopsis

"I am dead. Who killed me?"

Review:

This game will probably bug you if you've played other VR games before. However, if this is the first game you're planning to play in VR, then it might be alright for you.

Technically, the game functions well, although the background are low-res. The characters and world objects are all bizarrely scaled. I know there's an unofficial fix for the scaling, but I'm told that the fix brings other problems.

Anyway. The cast is tasked with finding the killer among them, even though they don't know who even died. Story was alright on the first run. However, the second run was just a rehash of the first, with a few additions, and an edited ending if you collect all the extra content. I thought that the choices in the second run would give some interesting What If scenarios like the Bad End in the first run, but this was not the case. The bad endings in the second run sure do give information on the characters, but they aren't very conclusive.

There's barely any VR interactivity. This VN should've been 2D.

I feel the sequel (ALTDEUS) is way better just from the first 30 minutes. If you're tight on cash, get the sequel instead.

If huge characters and environments break your immersion, try changing the custom scale to about 40% in the advanced video setting in SteamVR.

Seriously, the narrative, voice acting, and soundtracks are amazing.
It would be a waste not to enjoy them because of the ridiculous scale this game uses by default.

First and foremost, this is a visual novel, so a lot of focus has to be in the story itself. Now, the story isn't bad, and I can see what they were going for with the story and how it is presented. There is an interesting question posed through the narrative, a thought experiment that I did like.

However, the overall experience is... lacking. The VR space is not used well - there are no instances of meaningfully looking around the environment for one thing, and for another most scenes are presented in a way that would easily translate to the 2d medium common to a visual novel. The experience is extremely linear with very, very few choices presented to the player. Audio is in Japanese only, which is not necessarily a downside but worth pointing out given the price point of the game and the absence of other features. The visual design has distorted proportions where other characters are abnormally large compared to the player's point of view.

Altogether this led to an overall lacklustre experience in my opinion.

Honestly, I was expecting more, but you're just seating there, pushing left trigger... and that's it...

If you're into VNs I guess it's ok, but well, I couldn't even begin to get interested there.... just left trigger non stop, is just.... meh.

Valiant effort to incorporate visual novel with VR.
Enjoyed the various ways they experimented with the platform.
Different take on Anime OP, common VN tropes, and the suspenseful moments are not half bad.

The script could've used some editing. And some fresh ideas.
It's not a good sign when everything feels like familiar JP territory.
Some ok plot twists here there, but the final reveal is a let down.
All the padding and filler towards the final part of the game, really wore my patience thin.
The less said about the MC, the better.

All in all begrudgingly thumbs-up, but seriously. Get a better writer and/or editor.

I've played this game on April/may 2019, Through a Family library share in a Google Cardboard using 3rd Party Software.
I thought i'd give up quickly due to the nature of how Uncomfortable Google Cardboard were for long sessions.
however, i found myself quickly intrigued, and somehow managed to finish the Novel.

I was in tears.
whether YOU would be in tears or not, it's up to you.
Maybe it all lies on your level of empathy and attention?
Maybe not.
Despite it's little issues,
nonetheless, It's a beautiful story.

this was, in particular, really incredible and i wished all my friends could play it.
after finished, still revised some chapters and wished i had erased the entire game from my head just to have that first time treatment again.

It's been 2 years now.
i told myself this would be my very first VR Experience to BUY once i had a proper VR.
And here i am.
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If you enjoy Literature, Light Novel or Visual Novel.
then you know it's style; It's in a Mystery Format.

You will be going through Science, and of course, Science based analogies to help the less intellectual one.
Regardless, i believe all you need is just to pay attention and you're set.

The first VR Visual Novel messes up where it could had put it strenghts - immersion. The world is unrealistically huge and the charakters are too big. This is confirmed by the devs to be on purpose, so there is no fix. This is sad, since fixing this issue that is heavily complained about could be fixed with a few minutes of work.

I am sad to say that I dislike Tokyo Chronos. I really liked it at first. It is a solid proof of concept for VR visual novels and their potential for immersive storytelling like never before. However, as a visual novel itself, is it good? Not quite. The central mystery and characters are actually decently interesting. However, one fatal, insurmountable flaw holds it back: its pacing. it is extremely slow and tedious. Conversations ramble on and on, and constant internal monologues kill any semblance of progress. I've played a lot of visual novels in my life - and trust me, if anyone can tolerate bad pacing, it's me. 90% of visual novels have bad pacing at some point in their runtime. It is a fact of life. Even some of the best ones like Umineko, Muv-Luv Alternative, Steins;Gate, SubaHibi - their pacing is absolute trash at times. But it is the climaxes; the high points of these stories that are so orgasmically good, so mind-blowing that I can tolerate the pacing, all so I can experience that high again. Tokyo Chronos, however, lacks these moments. It never manages to hit a particular high, and comes off as somewhat weak. For a murder mystery, it is surprisingly PG, with no real edginess, no blood, or sense of horror or dread that keeps you on your seat like lets say a Danganronpa or Zero Escape game. It is not enough to make me strap on my clunky headset, sit in my chair, and strain my eyes for hours and hours on end reading it. You have to understand that wearing a VR headset for a long time is really uncomfortable. As a result, the experience needs to be a lot tighter to make it really worth your time. Tokyo Chronos didn't do that - it did the exact opposite.

To illustrate how tedious this game is, let me tell you how to get the true ending, spoiler-free. First, you have to play through the entire main route once, which is already pretty long, then replay the entire thing from the beginning, but now the game sprinkles in a bunch of extra scenes here and there to let you delve into individual character routes, and you have to read all of them to finally unlock the true ending. At this point, still pretty standard visual novel stuff - nothing I haven't already seen a bunch of times before.This would be fine and dandy if it wasn't so unbelievably tedious: skipping in this game is painfully slow and annoying. It only skips scenes, not dialogue, and there are usually 20 scenes per chapter that you've already seen before in your previous playthrough, with only 3-4 new scenes. To add insult to injury, the extra info that the game drip feeds isn't even that interesting; most of them are just there to pad out the plot, without really helping you arrive at the truth at all. After a while, I just gave up. I wasn't gonna sit here for 20 more hours for crumbs of plot at a time in between incessant skipping of scenes I've already seen before. Here's hoping Altdeus is a much better game due to it being their second attempt at making a VR visual novel.

This is the first Visual Novel I play in VR, because I wanted to know what the experience was, and on that matter.

So I will just leave here the 2 reasons why I recommend this game: VR Visual Novel is really cool, and Monono Yu (The pink haired character).

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Now for the review itself.

My only problem is with the story's base setting, because I just I found out I'm not really a fan of the "detective"/"mystery murder" format, as I feel it's just a sad excuse to make an compelling story, not that it isn't. I mean, Danganronpa is interesting, and surprising, but here... If I were to compare it, I would say it's a mix of Angel Beats and Steins' Gate, two stories that I really like, however, I feel they were great because they either went full science mode, or full spiritual mode.

This one... As a science-cultured person, the idea of "Quantum"s acting as fairies for people was a really poor and sad excuse for the super natural part of the plot... But I do understand that the point of the story is not that, just that this was the excuse for the sake of the "murder mystery/time loop" plot.

Some stereotypes in a couple characters felt a little too forced for me, but maybe I'm just used to better stories, or maybe I just don't know any people similar to some of those forced characters, but that wasn't enough to spoil the overall mood anyway, because the experience of a VR Visual Novel was certainly interesting.

I could look around, see everyone's expressions, understand more of their situation even when they are not the ones talking, And although I say some characters felt forced, others were really well executed too and felt fitting, so there is a balance. The story also does a Yoko Taro, forcing you into a Bad Ending, and then you have to replay the game with some extras, seeing the perspective of the supporting characters, but although it may look like just a replay, it is a sequel to the first ending, as you may notice the changes in the "non-skippable" parts, thus, the existence of a continuous Time Loop.

So certainly, the story and characters can be interesting, the excuses were too forced and the forced bad ending was annoying, but I could only understand why it was like that because of the changes I saw in the "second loop".

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Having finished the ending now, I must admit that the final conflict, let me say it's related to "self-sacrifice" not to spoil too much, and I personally dislike that kind of thinking, and I can't understand people who think like that to such "advanced" levels, so although the ending felt a little stupid, the message was good.

Monono Yu is also the best girl. In the second loop, most of the scenes I couldn't skip were related to her, so I was pretty ok with seeing the changes all over again, although seeing the ending, I now understand why it changed so much after all.

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Having now fully finished this game's sequel, Altdeus, if you are wondering if you need to play Tokyo Chronos for that, you are not really strictly required, but you will get a few references that are both "irrelevant" and one quite relevant to Altdeus' plot that will improve your experience on Altdeus.

If you like visual novels, mystery crime stories, and also interested in VR games then you should definetly give it a try. The story starts casually but at the end it slowly becomes much more complicated. During the first playthrough you won't have much choice, exactly 2 and both route leads to bad endings, but after you finished your first run you will unlock the "true playthrough" with more scenes and much more decisions to make. It took me 27 hours to finish the full game but I really didn't wanted to rush it, I took my time looking around and enjoying the sight of the cute anime girls...

What I liked

What I didn't liked

Tokyo Chronos is predictable, yet still very enjoyable for a mystery novel.

It doesn't do much with VR, as all you really do is stand around and advance text, with each character fading in and out with new poses or occasionally a very short animation. Interactivity is basically zero outside of the decisions you can make.

LAM did a really good job with making each character's design stand out instantly, even if some of the characters themselves aren't very fleshed out and stay rather two dimensional throughout the entirety of the game. Music was there when it was needed but otherwise didn't stand out, outside of the major scenes when a vocal track would play.

All in all, it's not going to knock your socks off, but it's still a fun experience if you like mystery or VNs in general. A good first step for MyDearest!

I haven't played a VR visual novel before. Gameplay wise, the game isn't trying to do much different from your regular 2D visual novels, but the new perspective brings some interesting things to the table. It feels very unique.

English translation is pretty spotty, but serviceable through most of the game. There's a short (a couple of minutes long) Machikoji-flashback later in the game that's bafflingly fully translated via google translate. Some examples:
"That, a street alley, long time no see."
"Kamiya smiled with a smile I gaze at me."
"Kamiya from looking at the window at the distant eye, face down the eyes."

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. Visual Novels can be pretty hit or miss with me, but the mystery aspect of this story and the slow reveal of information kept me intrigued. I thought the majority of the characters were really likable and enjoyable, and all of them really started growing on me by the end, even a couple of characters who I thought were just kind of bland and forgettable at first were given really great development, which made me care for all of them a lot, except Morozumi, I didn't really like her. Overall, great story, with twists I never saw coming, even with lots of theorizing when I would finish playing each day. The VR aspect is a little bit lacking. While all the character designs are great, some of the backgrounds and props can look weird. Also it's mostly just reading and looking around, with little interactivity, but hey it is a visual novel, that's kinda to be expected. The last thing I want to mention is the multiple endings. You need to get all the endings to get the true ending at the end, which can be a little confusing at first on how that works, but I found that if you go to the chapter select menu after completing one of the endings, it clears up a lot of that confusion, and organizes out all the endings pretty well. So anyway, if you're into visual novels, especailly mystery ones, and basic level VR, I'd reccomend giving it a look. I do see it on sale for most major steam sales for about 30% off, so if interested, I would recommend wishlisting it and waiting for a sale.

This game was incredible. The story was written so well, the characters are unique, and the overall game play was beautiful. I only wish this game was more fluent in animation of the characters, and that when playing you could see more than your torso. But other than that, this game was great and I'm glad I gave it a shot. I absolutely love visual novel games, and this one hit me as to be one of the best I've played.

I have never done any reviews on a game before, so this will be my first.

This game is incredibly underrated considering the price, and compared to some other (cough) "Similar" experiences, you feel connected and set in for a long, intricately written, and well paced ride. Having owned a VR for the better part of a year and without finding enough willpower to set it up most of the time, this experience has given me enough motivation to come back to it the very next day, seating myself for a what would be a real long trip into the world that is Tokyo Chronos. Do you know how hard it is to clean a VR headset writhed in tears? If not, this game can definitely help you find out.

11/10 would cry in VR again. - Side: I need more microfiber cloths.

Just finished the game, probably the longest stint I done in Vr, which is a positive as it kept me immersed. Cool characters with great voice actors some of my favourites (Ishikawa and Uemura).
Only negative thing wish there was more to your body, like being able to see and move your arms would have been nice.
But overall I enjoyed the story.

I have always had an urge to play visual novels but for some reason I never did.
This game caught my eye and I decided to give the genre a go.
And oh boy..
The game really pulled me in.
Top notch voice acting, beautiful story, well designed characters.
The ending actually made me cry... and I am a grown man.
This game set me a standard for future VR visual novel kind of games.
If I am to buy one in the future, I except nothing less than Tokyo Chronos offered me.
Beautiful game, highly recommend.

Experience the unique weirdness of being hugged in VR - all of the discomfort of having someone invade your personal space, without any of the warmth or intimacy of touch!

It was a totally new experience. The story, the characters, sounds, and user interfaces are all sophisticated. TOKYO CHRONOS is indeed the next generation of Visual Novels. This would be the role model of VR visual novels.