Thoughts on Chaos;Child

I´m actually cheating because the next one I have to talk about is Steins;Gate chronologicallly speaking but once I completed Chaos;Head Noah I felt moved because of the ending, I was hyped to continue the Chaos series so I jumped to Chaos;Child instead for now. Words are not enough to explain how much I love the Chaos series and specifically Chaos;Child which is easily my favorite visual novel, I´d go for hours talking about its story, its characters, its writing, etc, you get the point; I don´t think Child is a perfect visual novel by any means and that´s what we´ll be talking about.

In Chaos;Head Noah there was an event called ¨The Third Melt¨ which was a huge earthquake, said earthquake produced the death of thousands of people, it was a big tragedy that wasn´t fleshed out in Chaos;Head Noah, I mean, you could see the whole thing happening and that it was a bad thing but you never see the perspective of the victims from the earthquake, the good thing is that Chaos;Child allows you to see from first hand how horrible was The Third Melt, not only tons of people died, but only one hospital was accepting refugees, basically people were killing each other to get into that hospital, you also coud see other people taking advantage of the earthquake and raping women, killing children, some others couldn´t handle the situation and just killed themselves. The eathquake produced PSTD to all young people in Shibuya, it doesn´t help that most of them ended oprhans, the game relates this event as Hell on Earth.

Nowadays, the earthquake is a thing from the past, however, the murders called ¨Generation of Madness¨ from the previous game return once again, someone is killing people in bizarre ways in exact dates, these new muderers are called ¨New Generation Madness¨ and little by little they start to shake Shibuya. The first death is about a streamer who is doing his stuff and suddenly he gets hungry, he gets one cheese and start to chop it, he eats the cheese and later he realizes that he wasn´t eating cheese, what he was choping with a knife was his one arm and hand, what he was eating was his own hand with thumb included, why you ask? Well, that´s something the player has to figure out, the game doesn´t show you any explicit CG, but it´s now why about the text, it narrates how the whole thing is going on, the streamer was basically commiting cannibalism without him noticing it.

Alright, the protagonist this time is some named Takuru, which means is not Takumi from the previous game, instead of being a creepy otaku and a disgusting person, he´s just normal but a little bit pretentious, he´s the kind of person that think information is everything, he even has a term called ¨right-sider¨ to tell you if you are on the right side of the information, he´s someone arrogant, capable of looking down on you if you are not as informed as him, he´s more enjoyable than Takumi but kind of a jerk you know, although he has social anxiety, he is not capable of talking to new people. The thing with Takuru is that he is the newspaper club president, so he uses that as excuse to follow the New Generation Madness, he´s actually excided to these murders occurs again, so he can investigate everything and finding the culprit, just because he finds it funny and exciting, he basically thinks all of these people dying is exciting, with that personality trait, you can see the kind of person he is, I mean he´s not a bad person per se, but he´s pretty inmature. The game actually does an interesting contrast between Takumi (the guy from the first game) who didn´t want anything from the murderers, and this Takuru person who is chasing the case actively, two different poles; that´s basically what the game is about, chasing this new case and finding the culprit.

This is a Chaos game so the Delusional Trigger is back but this is for worse, I honesly think the Delusional Trigger shoudn´t be in this game and I´ll explain why. In Chaos;Head Noah had sense, Takumi was really a mentally unstable person, he had a pretty low self steem and suffered from a huge social axiety, he was also a person that was entirely all alone by himself, also he was pretty paranoid and he had a incredible big sexual libido, plus other things I won´t mention because spoilers; it´s completly normal to him to be that delusional, to have these vivid delusions, it´s a game mechanic that fits with the character. Sadly, this doesn´t happen with Chaos;Child, the Delusional Trigger doesn´t fit, I won´t say that Takuru is someone who is cool mentally speaking but he is not as mentally unstable as Takumi, he even have friends and people who care about him, he´s not socially isolated and yeah he has a sexual libido but not that high, it´s normal and I could go on, I´ve searched about it and people just say that they daydream too much and yeah but would you have vivid delusions just by daydreaming, I daydream a lot and it´s not something comparable to these two, even Takumi acknowledge that he has these vivid delusions all day but Takuru doesn´t even do that, he just have them and doesn´t mention that fact like never.

That´s not even my problem, the delusions are as boring as they used to be from the previous game, it´s like before, you can choose between a possitive and negative delusion, and yeah, I said the possitive delusions from Chaos;Head Noah were boring but you know, they were hilarious at least, a few of them were actually ok, this is not the case of Chaos;Child, I found them to be extremely boring, I´m trying to remember so hard right now but I can´t think of just one that made me laugh or found interesting, I´ve got to be honest, I skipped almost every possitive delusion, I´m not interested in the horny projections of Takuru, but in my defense, I´ve already completed this game a few years ago (?

The negative delusions are more interesting than the possitive ones just as Chaos;Head Noah but they are still boring, even more boring than the ones from Noah which is too much to say, I´m not even afraid to say it, the Delusional Trigger felt way too forced, although I remember one negative delussions which was pretty hilarious and made me laugh a lot, mostly because of how random it is. Takuru and his friends are having launch and suddenly his best friend gets annoyed because Serika (another friend of Takuru) didn´t bring him a ham sandwich, he gets extremely annoyed and angry, even insulting this Serika person, Takuru gets insulted too for no reason, then the best friend hangs Serika to death. The best friend is not even a masogynist person but that is what is so funny about the delusion, it has no sense and it´s funny that Takuru thinks about their friends killing each other just because a ham sandwhich, the way his best friend talks about the whole thing is funny too. I know it may sounds dumb but it´s seriously funny when you play the game.

There is another negative delusion which is good actually, it´s about you and your friends in a strange room, your head is removed, I mean, in order to make your brain seen, then, someone else holds a spoon, with said spoon, this someone starts to eat your brain little by little, it´s disgusting because the game relates you very well how all of this is happening, text by text, and how by touching certain parts of your brain, it can make you sad, or happy, excited or even horny, all of this with a sound like the person was eating a brain for real, it was disgusting but interesting.

Let´s talk about the atmosphere. Chaos;Head Noah had an amazing atmosphere, no matter if you liked the game or not, that´s a fact, how the game makes you feel within the narrative is great, all of this mainly because its low pacing and protagonist. Well, the thing with Chaos;Child is that still maintains said atmosphere, indeed, Chaos;Child is a pretty dark game, but the atmosphere is not as great as Noah´s, i´ts just a matter of perspective to be honest. Chaos;Head Noah had that atmosphere from the begining because it fits with the game itself, lets remember that Takumi is pursued by the case and the murders, it doesn´t matter how hard he tries to evade them, they just keep coming. Chaos;Child had another approach, as I said before, this time, Takuru is the one who chases the cases until it´s too late and the case starts to hunt him, so it´s normal that the game doesn´t have a heavy atmosphere from the begining.

As you can imagine, Chaos;Child´s pacing is slow, not as slow as Noah´s tho. Again, the game preffers to have another approarch, Chaos;Head Noah always takes an eternity to elaborate every single thing from its script and that happens even when the plot reaches its higher point, what happens in Chaos;Child is different. The game takes 3-4 chapters from the begining, said chapters is only about to present context and characters, it´s the slowest part of the game, of course, there are interesting things happening...sometimes, but the game is really focused to make you feel part of its world, even if its needed to sacrifice its pacing. I know 3-4 chapters doesn´t sound like a big ideal, but trust me, the first 3-4 chapters of the game are LONG, I spent days completing these chapters; the good thing is when you reach chapter 5, the plot gets incredibly good, the slow pacing disappears and it´s impossible to stop playing, the story gets insane. I mentioned that Chaos;Head Noah is like a roller coaster, think about Chaos;Child as a space ship (? it has a slow start, but the thing doesn´t stop to get higher and higher until the last consequences.

I said that the scientific stuff from Chaos;Head Noah was interesting and since I´m someone who likes science fiction, I have no issue reading about that stuff, however, I found the science fiction stuff to be kind of intrusive, it ended being overwhelming to be honest. Gladly, what I just mentioned doesn´t happens in Chaos;Child because yeah there is scientific stuff but the game is way more centered into the case, the psychological stuff, the plot, etc. For example, the Di Sword thing ended being intrusive as well, I mean, it´s amazing that they take their time to explain the whole thing while taking everything seriosly but you coud get tired about it; Di Sword are explained in one chapter, no more no less, they are not a subject within the game and that´s pretty sweet, besides, the game doesn´t look as realistic as Chaos;Head Noah regarding CG´s so they fit in the game aesthetical speaking.

Chaos;Head Noah had an issue regarding information, sometimes the game didn´t know how to eject tons of information and used monologues from Takumi in order to do that, this fact keeps happening in Chaos;Child but thank God they found a way to make things more organic with the bulleting board. The bulleting board is where the character will analyze the case, it might sound boring but it´s actually useful, it´s this way we´ll be solving the case, we´ll be the ones who selects the proof and stuff, of course, the game will be guiding you by hand as it if we were little babies who couldn´t think by themselves, but it´s cool they let you ¨play¨ this way in a mystery visual novel.

As much as I played Chaos;Child, I realized there were things where Chaos;Head Noah was better like the opressive atmosthere since the begining, the gore and murders are more insane while Chaos;Child does many things better than Noah, but there is one thing Chaos;Child wins over Chaos;Head Noah and every single visual novel from this conected universe, and that is, the story. I have no words to describe how amazing and great is the story of this game as much you progress, there is a parto of this game when they reveal you a plot twist that shakes your whole body, then, at the same moment, they reveal another plot twist, then they reveal you another one, and another one, and another one, just like that, cool thing this game has a lot of foreshadowing and it´s a great one because, one thing I love about Chaos;Child is how everything makes sense, it was there from the begining, you just couldn´t see it, and the game gives clues you don´t realize until it´s too late, I mean, this already happened in Chaos;Head Noah but in this game is at another level.

One thing I love about Chaos;Child is how centered is into being a more personal story. Chaos;Head Noah was about beating the bad guy you know, you do and the game is finished, this is not the case with Chaos;Child and it´s something I personally find pretty cool, there is no black or white, there are many qualifies, many answers, it´s really hard to explain without spoilers, but trust me, it´s amazing. I personally love Takuru, he´s the best protagonist I´ve played within this SciAdv thing, he is an amazing written character which goes through the most painful character development. We also have Serika which is my most favorite female character, she´s wow, I really have no words, the best written female character in the series, there are so many layers between these characters, I could go for a long time saying why they are so complex but that´s not my intention.

I played Chaos;Child when I was way younger, I said things such as Chaos;Child being one of the best games I´ve ever played in my life, saying that it´s at the same level of mystery or psychological horror novels, I´m not sure about that last part anymore, those are heavy words but replaying Chaos;Child again made me reinforce the idea that it´s the best visual novel I´ve ever played to this day. Chaos;Child is easily one of my favorite videogames of all time and easily a must-play if you are into visual novels, no meme, I consider Chaos;Child to be a flawed masterpiece.