Memory's Dogma CODE:01

Sometimes you find yourself revisiting an old memory, wanting to check up on it and see what happened, only to see that the nostalgia led nowhere. To me, this game is exactly that.

I must start off saying that I absolutely adored the art, it was what drew me in initially, and the SciFi premise seemed all too alluring for a young "me" that first played this game in 2016. Which is also why it hurts so much to give this game a negative review. Others have already pointed out the flaws of the plot going from SciFi to something more akin to fantasy in a futuristic setting, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

The main reason for me giving the game a negative review isn't however the change in genre midway through the last parts of the game, but due to all the loose ends left behind. This was supposed to be an episodic visual novel with the next part in the works when this game released in 2016. We are now in 2024, a little over 7 years later and approaching our 8th, and CODE:02 has completely faded from everyone's mind. The game was cancelled, and I can not with a clean conscience recommend the beginning of a story that will never see an end.

For those who actually care about seeing the end of this story, there is a Light Novel continuing from the end of the first episode labelled CODE:02 as well as a CODE:03 also out at the time of this review, though I would not recommend getting the game just to read the Light Novels.

Good game but achievements are bugged :(

Not recommended. This vn has pretty good graphics and voice acting, and an okay atmosphere. That's about it. As for the story... umm...

The initial world-building and the beginning of the story are good. It was a thrilling sci-fi mystery exploring what might happen if human memories can be digitized. However, somewhere in the middle, the story suddenly got derailed. The personalities of the story became weird, and the characters weren't themselves anymore. The story then became some cheap X-men-style superhero movie with a purely evil antagonist...

Starts as a sci-fi mystery novel, but turns suddenly into a superpower action story.  The story is a waste of time, the only good thing is the art and the music. 

Update, as of 23/06/2022: After having spent some time away from this series, I must admit that the story was weaker than I remember. I think I was fairly invested in the characters (especially due to their voice acting - it was incredible in this game) but the story itself felt fairly poorly written except for maybe at the start. I've also rewritten parts of the review to flow better, and remove unnecessary spoiler tags.

This review contains spoilers, which are marked appropriately. Please read with caution if you want to go in blind. The last paragraphs will be a summary, so to speak, while the ones prior will describe my thoughts on features of the VN and the story (this will have spoilers tagged).

This story is not for the very weak of heart. There are events that occur that admittedly made me cringe a little, though I won't discuss those here due to story spoilers. The game does show blood at times (and doesn't shy away from it) but unless one is very squeamish they should be fine reading this novel, in my opinion.

With a moderate reading speed (or using the auto function), and assuming you don't reread sections should you hit bad ends, this novel shouldn't take longer than 10-12 hours to complete. Due to a fast reading speed (and missing all of the bad ends until a later replay), I was able to complete the novel faster.

The visual novel has a clean artstyle that very rarely strays from the images you see in the Steam store page (exceptions tend to be deliberate, artistic choices as opposed to incompetency). If you like it (like I personally did) then you'll like it throughout. If you didn't, you probably won't enjoy the "visual" part of this visual novel very much.

This novel has full voice acting (including the protagonist), which is quite nice. The voice acting seems exclusively Japanese (I was unable to find an option to change the language, but as I usually prefer the audio in visual novels to be in their native language I didn't bother changing this), but the cast seem very skilled and were able to really sell the idea to me that "this is the character talking - this is how the character genuinely feels right now". I don't remember any of it feeling unnatural, and the voice actors were able to really capture the characters' emotions.

The settings feel comprehensive enough. There's sliders for text speed, auto play speed, precise volume controls and the option to quieten the background music while people speak. There is slightly more, but I don't remember. The volume controls do not extend to the opening song, so please exercise caution if you typically play games with very low sound settings.

The game window can be resized, but only has fullscreen and windowed modes (no borderless fullscreen, and no typing a resolution). This makes it easy to use, but frustrating if you need to switch tasks often, since you can see your desktop in the background.

The game comes with a "Tips" section, that lets you review key words of the series. This is helpful if you forget the meaning of something, or a character's explanation confuses you. The tips unlock as you play the game.

The gallery and OST are only available after you clear the game. While this makes sense for the OST, I don't like it that much for the gallery. These will appear under a tab called "Extras" in the main menu.

Fight scenes in the series are not brilliantly executed, in my opinion. The overall low use of CGs (this wasn't a major issue for me, but it was a shame as I very much enjoyed the artstyle) and extreme length and wordiness of the battles means that they can often drag on. In this regard, it feels far more like an endless wall of text with some soundtrack in the background, as opposed to a voice-acted visual novel. Despite this, the fights were able to capture my attention as they happened for the most part.

All choices in the game are timed, which I do appreciate, as it helps me keep my attention on the novel (my mind often tends to wonder). Unfortunately, the game has a one-route storyline (if you're familiar with the term "kinetic visual novel", this it it) with any bad ends being extremely abrupt, no alternative endings and the few choices that don't end the game having no significant impact on the story or the reader's perception of it. This takes away some of the replay value, though it makes sense as it has been stated that this series is episodic. Furthermore, the next instalments in the series will be in the form of light novels (not visual novels, like this game).

The story's start was its strongest point, but I believe that it falters towards the middle due to the excessive cast of characters, some of which felt horribly jarring in the setting provided and the jarring shift between the original, believable sci-fi plotline and a second one involving supernatural abilities[/spoiler]. If you want to play this visual novel for a hard sci-fi plot, you've come to the wrong place.

There is no explicit sexual content in the novel, though there is one scene in which you walk in on a female character in the shower . This scene has its own CG, if I properly recall. Besides from this one scene, the novel contains no content of a sexual nature.

The soundtrack is very good, but I don't believe it is the sort that I would download and listen to on my phone. It sets the tone and sets it well, but there are not many songs (exceptions being the OP and OST 13 - Day To Day) that stood out to me in particular.

I suppose to sum this review up, I see why people don't like Memory's Dogma. I really do. That said, this game gave me a sense of peace that not many visual novels have. The sort where I can just slow down, put my head back and smile as I think about the characters. I appreciate any visual novel capable of doing this, but even ignoring this last little point, I could easily recommend this for a £10 read.

It's awful, bad history, bad character development, bad dialogue, forgetable soundtrack and while the art is pretty good, there's nothing else to praise the tittle

Honestly, this isnt really a good novel.

It feels very inorganic, its set in a scifi setting not far from our time, so naturaly theres a lot of technology to explain. So how do they do it. Well....the story telling completely stops, and the main character explains it to the reader, i.e. the worst way to do it. For example: the "phones" they use have a mode that basically allows only the user to see the display, called sleeve-something. So in order to explain to the reader how it works and what it does, the main character thinks to himself preciesly that, breaking all tension and continuous story telling.

The main charactek you play as is a depressed useless person with very little redeeming qualities to speak of. Most of the time he just sits there and thinks to himself, "I WISH I CAOUD DO SOMETING". Other characters arent as useless as the MC, in fact quite the opposite. Which is a problem, because that makes you, the reader, feel damn useless, giving you the urge to shout at the MC to just do something, anything.

With the story bein that of a drama, naturally theres a lot of blame the character either throw at each other or at themselves. Frequency of these shit-throwing mathces was really high in the 7 hours Ive acumulated. They were really illogical, stupid and over the top.

On a positive note, the voice acting is solid, as is the art. Nothing breath taking, but definitelly above the average. The lines are delivered in a nice way that fits the character they are voicing. Unfortunately, that means that the MC sounds boored, depressed and completely clueless (obviously, hes supposed to sound like that, but listening to him talk like that for 7 hours made me want to help him in killing himself).

Have a nice day.


If youve played the game, and feel like I did it a misservice, please tell me in the comments, as there is a possibility it suddenly gets better later on. Needless to say I wont be playing it on my own accord any more.

Game is good, short but nice.
Its very hard to get bad ending.
Characters are great, Reina is my fave ;)
Plot is good but it could be more developed.

A visual novel game about memories and the setting is on a near future basis where the world has now have the ability to save memories into like files. But let's get to the chase and first tell what this is about.

-The only thing you do here is read, listen and imagine.
-The plot has some term that are hard to take in when you don't know about them. (Better to learn them still)
- This is just the first part in a series where the 2nd game is getting done some time in the future.
- Design and visual is already great for this kind of genre's, but still feels like its missing something(Just kidding, you'll know it once you play it.).

That sums up my review, but the music is just so-so for me since I'm bad at telling which music is bad or good so I'll leave it as blank or in the 50's for neutrality for me.

Clearly only the first part of a series, but does a great job of tying up the loose ends that matter while keeping things open for a continuation. Strong "action-y' VN with a protagonist who manages to stretch the mold in some places (not quite breaking it, but things like attempting suicide to get closer to someone (that's literally the opening of the VN so it's not much of a spoiler) and having intelligent counterpoints to the main villain's arguments rather that being overwhelmed by cuckoo logic make him more interesting than some. Gets a bit chuunibyou at times but for some that might be a bonus. And ends on a sobering and yet hopeful note.

Worth it.

Memory's Dogma: CODE01 was one of my personal favourite games.
But should YOU buy this game?
Well, it depends...
Here I will give you a list of up and downsides:
Pros:

-It has an amazing storyline.
-It has great art.
-A good soundtrack.
-Memorable characters.
-Good character development.
-Feels. ;-;

Cons:

-You don't really get choises that affect the story, because a wrong choice results in you dying, and having to choose again.
-Depending on what button you click, you dont hear the voices.
-The place where you can find extra info is somewhat limited.
-The dialogue is sometimes a bit too cliché.

Overall score: 8.5/10

Instruction: Do not push red button

Game: *pushes red button and trigger alarm*

Me: Why you do that!? What's the logic behind this!?

Game: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Game: *insert flashy disco ball and spectacular music playing in the background*

Everything is good but the stories is meh, especially during fight scene and srsly where are the supporting cast towards the finale? 6/10 cuz Reina, sequel better not suck.

It had a very strong start, very interesting futuristic sci-fi plot, theres some kind of mystery to solve trough your journey.

but as the game goes by, you will start o notice some things that doesnt fit at all, some characters who had a very strong introduction, at the end they're not important at all (might change in the future releases of the novel). It clearly seems that the plot was modified by a lot of people trough its writing.

At the end, I felt like watching a boring predictable casual anime.

I don't reccomend to read it if you expect a complex/intereting plot, cuz it has none. (At the end it was a little unexpected when they revealed the mystery, but thats about it. After that, The rest its just as predictable af.)

I will give a very weak "yes" but in this situations its when a "Not sure" button It's badly needed in the steam review section.

Personally I liked this visual novel, I was intrigued by the story even though there were a couple of plot twists that were easily identified and that it was clichéd in some parts, but that still didn't stop me from enjoying this visual novel.

What I would suggest though before purchasing this visual novel (or any visual novel in the future) is do your research on the series, as one review has addressed that there's a few plot holes and some parts aren't covered within this first part of the visual novel, well to be honest that could be down to the fact that, like I said previously, this is only the first part of a 3 part visual novel (https://vndb.org/v17655) and both the plots holes and our concerns could be filled later on in the series, or at least we all hope so.

The down side to this not only being a unfinished series but the final 2 parts are still in development, so with that being said it would probably be best to wait until part 2 is complete and has been released and part 3 to be close to being completed before purchasing this visual novel if you want to read something that's complete and not wait months or even years for the next part.

Overall:

Story: Intriguing but clichéd in some parts.
Voice acting: Perfect, I really liked the voices of each character.
Artwork: Amazing and is really well done.
Music: Great.
Keep in mind before purchasing that this is only part 1 of a 3 part VN with the other 2 parts still in development.

7 out of 10

So far I'm into 4 hours of Memory's Dogma CODE:01, let me tell you that I'm lovin it so far!! The voice actors did a great job, each voice suits each character, the art is magnificient! Props to the whoever made the artstyle. They did a really good job for the music and sounds as well! If you're a VN fan, you should defintely check this out! I got hooked on to the game straight after the first 25mins!!

I hope that the developers could see this comment.

I generally enjoy this game, but its flaw is as obvious as its shiny points.

This game has a extraordinary background setup. In the future, the dead people's memory could be transformed into digital form, so that their friends and families could see them again. Sounds really interesting? My expectation went higher as I played the starting part of the game, which give me a feeling of hard core Si-Fi. But later it comes two people who does not fit in the atmophere of this story at all. Yeah I am talking about Akane and Ema. The story line goes strange since the appearence of these two, well, playing spear and shiled with costume in this seemingly serious Si-Fi story? Instead of reaching any deeper into the topic of Human memory and its relation to the self awarness or something, the main part of the story after that turns to how ESPers fighting with each other(Well no matter how you explain that in "Science", it is still ESP, and it does nothing to the topic of memory).

While at the same time the other quality of this game is pretty much high, I feel more pity about this game that it could have been actually reach the height of some famous works. I mean, the characters and CV are pretty good, OST is awsome, and even several scene of the hero's fighting are really moving and strong. This is not a bad game, but it is such outstanding that makes me more concern about the flaws.

Since this is only the first part of the story, I suppose there is still chance to explain and complete the logic of the story line, and still chance to dig much more deeper into the topic of human memories.

Still recommend this game and looking forward to future improvement!

- Beatiful artwork
- Amazing soundtrack
- Great story

This game is awesome.If you looking for a good Visual Novel,This is the one.
For this price is worth.I'm going to buy every DLC that coming,Believe me just buy and enjoy it!
PS.sorry for my horrible english

10/10

How interesting and captivating the story is matters the most to me when I am reading a visual novel. I have a hard time sticking through some to the very end, and sometimes some activities in them seem cumbersome. In Memory's Dogma, I didn't quite have any of these issues, and I ended up getting invested in it pretty quickly.

My initial reasoning behind buying the game was its plot and the art style. The fact that it has voice acting is just a plus, in my opinion. But it is a very good plus for this story. The VAs did a great job and it really helped give shape to the characters and their emotions and actions.

I don't think I am capable of giving a proper analysis of the story in-depth, but I would like to highlight some important aspects about this story to help raise a point on what to expect before buying (without trying to spoil the story).

1) This starts off as a murder mystery, as implied in the title's description
2) It is not JUST a murder mystery.
3) It basically switched genres after the second in-game day.

If you wre looking for a visual novel grounded with very real questions, like 'what defines someone as being real' Or do memories make up what a person is in their entirety', then I don't think this story will satisfy you. It starts off really well in that regard, and raises some interesting and thought provoking notions of the story being told here, but it's pretty clear that by the end of it this isn't where the story was going at all. it just seemed to start out like that.


Genre switch: It still does an alright job of making the story composed, but there are times where it inadventerently forgets its self and seemed to care very little about some of the characters introduced. This isn't to say it isn't good after the switch, but it does leave a lot to be desired. There could have been far more done to make it better.

Characters: The characters were well put together and a little cliche, but it was done well so it wasn't overbearing. A quirky habit or two; unique traits each character has that don't stand out too much but are identifiable were really nice touches. And of course there are backstories!

Issues: As far as my playtime goes, my game only crashed once near the beginning. After and up until the end I encountered no crashes. I did have another issue while using the scroll wheel on my mouse to go through the text. It suddenly got locked into the archive of text, but I managed to fix this by just using a normal mouse click, and then continued using the scroll wheel. Besides these, no other issues were encountered.

I can't recommend this as a murder mystery story. The way it started off and the sudden genre change was too drastic and made the mystery aspect seem unimportant; however, as the genre it sort-of morphed into, it ened up being alright.

Was it worth the price? Almost. If the story flourished a bit more, then I would be able to recommend this game for what I expected it to be when I bought it, but as it stands, critically I cannot. As a casual reading? It's alright. So I suppose I would recommend it as a casual reading, but probably only as a casual visual novel.

Story: 6/10
Voice: 9/10
Characters: 7/10
Glitchiness: 1/10 (lower is better)
Art style: Great! Liked it. Fits well with the story

EDIT: I finished the game two days ago, a day after I bought it (faststest time for me with a visual novel), but before I make a complete review, I need to let my feelings sink in for a week. I could go on and on about how much I loved it because I get this way after finishing visual novels (or any game) I really like; I want more and I'm sad that it's over. I need about a week or two to look at this game from a non-biased standpoint. Take my incomplete and by no means professional review below for what it is.

I'm currently in the middle of this game so my review will be a little incomplete. I'm just gonna give my quick opinion of it without exactly analyzing ever little thing. I'll probably edit and continue my review once I finish the game. For a better and more in-depth review, there are probably some down below,

I've been hyped for this game ever since I saw it's trailer on Sekai Projects's Youtube, and so far it hasn't disappointed. When I read the summary, I got the same feeling that I got with Lucid9 (that it's gonna be awesome) which is another visual novel (for FREE) which I highly recommend you play as well. It's made it's way as my favorite visual novel. Back on topic, the story to Memory's Dogma, for me at least, is very engrossing. I love the future-istic world and the lore that comes along with it. One can tell it's very thought out especially when the protagonist goes on to describe how e-Memory would go on to only be used for the deceased. As for the actual current story, I'm hooked. I like all the characters (even ones I didn't at first) so when trust issues arise, I want to have faith in the characters (I am a trusting person by nature though). I've done my best not to put this visual novel "down"(stop readin it for short amounts of time) which doesn't happen very often with me. Even some really good visuals, I get bored of after reading for too long (the only other visual novel to do this was Lucid9). Every time I felt like I wasn getting bored of the story, it would throw a curevball and instantly regian my attention. And when choices arise, I feel very conflicted on what to choose. I obviously haven't replayed the game yet so I can't say whether or not they make much of a difference, but when the timer kicks in and you need to make a decision fast, I found myself freezing up before finally clicking on one. This could be differnt for all people but like I said, this "review" is just my quick opinion so I'll be referring to my experiences making this

Overall (even though I only really focused on the story), I am addicted to this game and say it's easily worth the $15 dollars. You won't be disappointed (at least that's what I say).

P.S. I'm no expert on art music but I think both are really well done.

A pretty good VN for something that's funded thru kickstarter.Took me 10.28 Hours to finish.
I just in love with this VN. Though certain plot twists were sorta predictable.

The story itself is good. It's not Amazing but to me it's good enough to make me play this VN till the next morning without sleep. Great illustrations.

Overall a good game to get if you want to play a VN.
Would buy the sequel if there is gonna be any.


p.s : reina best waifu