Chaos;Head Noah is the first visual novel integrated within the SciAdv universe thing I talked about through the Anonymous;Code review. The main reason to play Noah again is because I wanted to play it on handheld mode through the Nintendo Switch; my other reason to play it is because there is a certain event that occurs in Anonymous;Code which is connected to every single game from this universe, so I was curious to play this game after having played A;C. I´m planning to play every game from the SciAdv again so this might be a long ride, I decided to begin from the one who started it all.
The plot of Noah is complicated to explain because there is so much stuff going on, it´s hard to write all of that in a summary, but if I had to choice, you could say Noah is about a teenager named Nishijou Takumi, he´s a creepy otaku and a disgusting person but not someone who could do bad things, he´s just someone with a toxic life style but not a bad person per se. Anyways, strange murders are happening through Shibuya and for some reason, these murders are like chasing this Takumi person, as if said murders were made in order to shake him mentally speaking. In this case, I´d say something like he decides to uncover the truth and save everybody but Takumi is not a hero, so he does what a normal person would do, just trying to ignore everything and keep going with his life, but as much as he does so, the murders get closer and closer to him.
The gimmick of Chaos;Head Noah is the delusions, so this Takumi person is pretty delusional, makes sense since he is someone who is really detached from reality, living all by himself in a container-house, prived from all social interaction at all, just living in his fantasy world. The delusions of Takumi can get pretty vivid, so there will be times when we can choose whether we want Takumi to have a possitive or negative delussion, the screen will get green when we chose a positive delusion, and it will get red when we chose a negative delusion, that´s all we can do gameplaywise, not much to be honest, but it´s a visual novel, these deluisons are actually interesting only as a concept, because it says a lot about Takumi.
For example, Takumi, as I said, is a creepy otaku which says all 3D women are garbage and only 2D are the real deal, he keeps saying all of this through the entire game lol, then you can see he contradicts himself quite a lot and I´ll explain why. I talked about these possitive delusions but I didn´t say all of these possitive delusions are erotic delutions, now someone would think that these erotic delutions are just about the 2D world which Takumi talks a lot, but nothing like that, the erotic delusions are always about 3D women he talks a little bit sometimes, so why would you reject 3D women but still fantasizing about them? I said possitive delusions are good as a concept but when you are playing the game, they are mid, boring, etc. I mean, I think delusions sometimes have a bad timing to appear on the screen, most of the times feels like they are fucking up the pacing of the game, there was this moment when I just wanted to skip every possitive delusion, they are not even cringy they are just boring, but I won´t deny sometimes there was a good one.
Good thing about this are the negative delusions which are far more interesting than the possitive ones, they can get pretty hilarious and with no sense at all. Takumi is a person who is pretty paranoic, that´s normal taking into account the kind of person he is and the things he is going through, all of this is projected through his negative delussions, these are all about bad situations like he being killed or betrayed by someone, he´s certainly someone who is not capable of trusting another human being and as I said, that is projected through his negative delussions, welp, I can understand this guy, every character here is a mental case.
Chaos;Head Noah is not as popular as other SciAdv games and that´s because mostly of Takumi, since he can be pretty annoying from times to times, I honestly find him fascintating as a character in terms of writing but I can´t deny he wouldn´t be a person who is fun to hang out with. The other reason is because its low pacing, Noah is a really slow burn visual novel, it´s not afraid to take hours or whole chapters to introduce characters or context, hell, as a matter of fact, I played 5 HOURS in order to complete the first chapter. I personally like slow burn stories but I can understand if someone can´t just play the game because of this, I mean, you need to be really patient through this one.
Think about Chaos;Head Noah as a roller coaster, there are moments through the story that are peak and there are so others that are just sloow, nothing happening, just slow exposition, I mean, it´s cool because whether something big happens, it has the huge potential to shock you and making you feel anxious, I think the visual novel is like mostly of Takumi. Obviously, we play as him, you could say we become him because we spend more time reading his thoughts and monologues than actually speaking to other people, as I said, he is someone detached from reality, as such, he only spends time with himself; whenever Takumi had to go outside I felt insecure just as him, when he returns to his container-house and turn on his computed, you can head the fan noises and stuff, he just rambling about random stuff while relaxing, man, I really felt that, I just think Noah does an amazing job in order you get into Takumi´s shoes.
The point I want to get in is that Chaos;Head Noah despite of its slow pacing, it probably has the best atmosphere of the whole SciAdv franchise, the way Noah makes you feel as paranoid or scary as Takumi is amazing, it´s a sense of paranoia that gets within the player, thanks to the murders of the game probably. The murders of Chaos;Head Noah are incredibly bizarre, there is no way they can show you graphic CG´s of the killings but they do narrate the whole thing in a explicit way. For example, one of the most famous murders of this game is ¨The Pregnant Man¨, I won´t get into much details, but someone inserts a baby or fetus within a man womb´s, all of this while this person is alive, they slice up the stomach and insert the baby/fetus, there is certain moment of the game when they narrate you the whole thing in a explicit way, how this person was able to do it step to step, it was kind of shocking to be honest, because this happens with every single murder, there were moments when I genuinely felt disgusted for what I was reading, but man, it was fascinating!
As a fun fact, Chaos;Head Noah was actually banned from Steam before its release, I´m not sure why but I think it was something related to the contents of the game, I think it´s unbanned now but at that time, when I read the news about it, I couldn´t help but feeling they were exagerating a little bit, but after playing the game, I can more or less understand why they decided to do that in the first place, Noah can get rough at times, I won´t justify it but I can understand it, still, it seems weird to me that Steam is actually banning a game because of its gore content while Nintendo let you publish the game just like that, it wasn´t banned from the Nintendo Switch after all, we are living in weird times, aren´t we? Still, not everything is that good, the Switch port is actually censored because it´s based on the Ps3 port, they censor a WHOLE ROUTE, almost like it doesn´t exist, I had to install a fan-made update in order to uncensor the whole thing.
Alright, so every SciAdv game has its own style, for example, Anonymous;Code uses a comic art style which looks amazing by the way, Noah just uses a realistic Shibuya, it´s not colored or something, the whole setting looks like real photos of shibuya implemented in the game, I mean, I think this thing has a name and I´m pretty sure it´s something like pre redered spaces but I´m not sure myself so let´s just say everything looks realistic. When going through Shibuya, you don´t see a beautiful city, you are looking at Shibuya through Takumi´s eyes, you are looking at an infested city of chaos because of the murderers, it´s said Shibuya it´s not safe anymore and the paranoia of who might be your enemy is insane, a city that doesn´t rest which is filled with tons of people, to be honest, one doesn´t feel good while going around shibuya, it feels pretty claustrophobic, it doesn´t help the fact that Takumi does shitty talk about the city.
In Chaoss;Head Noah there is a key element through the story called Di Sword, which let you to realboot your delusions, In won´t get into details because that´s spoiler territory. I like the concepts about the Di Swords, it´s said in the game that if you have a Di Sword, it´s most probably because you are a broken person mentally speaking, it´s not a joke when I said everyone here is a mental case. I might sound pretentious saying this but I don´t like their design in this game, they look way too fanciful, as if they were from an anime or a videogame...I mean, they are from a videogame lol, but it´s doesnt fit with the realistic aesthetic of the game, it feels unnatural to play in a realistic shibuya and then one character using an anime-looking sword. This is something that bothers me only in this game, because I´m okay with Di Swords in Chaos;Child, they fit within the aesthetic of the game, but in Noah is another story.
Now that we are talking about artistic style, I´ll go ahead and say it, I don´t like the character design, they are way too generic for me, maybe this character design was popular at the time and I really understand this is their first game but it feels like they paid some random dude to draw characters, it´s more noticeable when you look at the character design of Steins;Gate which is great of Anonymous;Code which is even as great, even Robotic;Notes is better. Again, I might sound pretentuous but it´s the way I feel.
Chaos;Head Noah is basically a psychological horror game mixed with thriller and science fiction, I like that the game take itself seriously, Di Swords are not just out of nowhere, the game actually tries to give them a logical meaning with complicated science stuff, it´s science fiction of course, but they use real scientific theories all the way, I mean, some of them are exaggerated but some other are just real, that´s pretty cool. What I don´t like is that sometimes the game can get intrusive with all of this stuff, sometimes there are times when there is so much information and the game just throws up all of that, it can get overwhelming. Chaos;Head Noah can get tiresome with the Di Sword thing, I remember one chapter when is centered around Takumi looking for a Di Sword through Shibuya, let´s just say it was boring.
Chaos;Head Noah is the begining of the SciAdv, to play it is mandatory, it´s a visual novel I´ve got a lot of appreaciation maybe because I´m looking at it through the nostalgia glasses, but I genuinely think is an amazing psychological and philosophical reading, even religious. There are many themes on Chaos;Head Noah but if I had to choose one to talk about it would be about running away from our duties; Takumi is a delusional boy who evades reality by staying in his little world of fantasies, the game doesn´t glorify that but instead does a huge criticism to that, I don´t think the game does it in a spectacular way and sometimes lacks subtlety, still it´s pretty cool.
I don´t think Chaos;Head Noah is perfect by anymeans, as I just mentioned many flaws the game has, but I can´t deny I´ve got a lot of appreciation to it, maybe because I´m looking at it through my nostalgia glasses. When you think about it, it´s easy to see Chaos;Head Noah was their first videogame, because it´s way too edgy, don´t get me wrong, I love that, but there is no visual novel from the SciAdv as grotesque as this one. Chaos;Head Noah is a mandatory visual novel to play if you are willing to get into this conected universe.
All of the screenshots were taken by me