In this game, you play as Hoshino Ichika (name can be changed but if you leave it as it is it’ll be voiced), a rookie police officer with a high moral compass and determination to help others. She’s a very determined and stubborn young woman who suddenly finds herself the target of the malicious terrorist organization Adonis. Collard with deadly poison and threatened for her life, she finds herself having to team up with a bunch of mysterious ex-police officers investigating this terrorist group. In the prologue and the common route, you’ll find yourselves making choices that’ll determine who you’ll end teaming up with. That being said, at the first playthrough you can only find yourself teaming up with 3 out of the 5 characters – Enomoto Mineo, Sasazuka Takeru, Okazaki Kei. After finishing at least one of these routes (in a happy ending, that is) Shiraishi Kageyuki’s route will unlock. Yanagi Aiji’s route, however, can only be played after you finish all of the other guys’ happy endings. To get all CG’s (the art is extremely beautiful, by the way) you’ll have to achieve the good end and the blighted love end. To get all trophies, you’ll have to achieve all possible bad endings for each of the characters, as well. Here is a great walkthrough for all the good & bad endings possible for each character (****/category/walkthrough/). Recommended character playthrough: Mineo – Takeru – Kei – Shiraishi – Yanagi. I, however, played Shiraishi before Kei and I found it to be just as great (: I highly recommend you play this game blind at first, see who you naturally team up with, and later on maybe follow the walkthrough. Personally, I try to achieve the Happy Endings on my own without a walkthrough, since it’s the most fun. Later on, I usually follow the walkthrough to get the normal and bad endings. If I’m unsuccessful in achieving a happy ending, I’ll usually look for hints in the walkthrough to see where I went wrong, but it’s usually easy enough to figure out since either the trust or affection levels will increase with each ‘correct’ choice. There are, however, choices that don’t trigger any of those scales, so you should be careful with them. One more important thing that confused me to no end in the beginning is the Trigger Mode. I honestly thought I was going crazy when it didn’t work out for me the first many times. I didn’t know what to do, but then I read some reviews online, and it cleared it up pretty well. Basically, you need to wait until the circle comes to align itself with the circle around the gun. If you succeeded, the light will turn red. If not, the light will turn gray. Either way you’ll know by whether you missed (failed) or hit (succeeded). The point is, naturally, to hit the target. If you don’t manage the first time, don’t worry and just go back and try again and again until you do. That’s what I did and eventually I got the hang of it and it was pretty fun (: The characters: Enomoto Mineo: Old fashioned, enthusiastic, and extremely self-conscious around women. Ex-police officer. Sasazuka Takeru: A genius hacker with a knack for sadism and calling others ‘idiots’. (Aldo ex-police in the cyber division). He does not trust easily. Kageyuki Shiraishi: a genius profiler with absolute lack of social skills, tact, and delicacy. He doesn’t know how to treat or interact with others, thus always makes them end up hating him. He has a very difficult personality to deal with, and he doesn’t seem to care what others thinks of him. He’s only ever interested in what he wants, the rest be dammed. Yanagi Aiji: The ‘big brother’ or ‘father’ figure on the group. Responsible, smart, and dedicated, Yanagi will do everything to help those in need. The plot: As you team up with one of the five guys, you peruse the X-day cases that have been terrorizing Japan for months to no end. Each route is unique and things rarely repeat themselves (aside from the common route, that is). As you try to figure out who put this deadly collar on you and to what end, you slowly gain the trust – and later affection – of the guys you’re working with. Features: You can high-max the skip read feature for easier skipping (it really does help when trying to achieve all endings and repeating the common route). My thoughts: This was a fun game. I enjoyed it a lot. From beautiful art to stressful action scenes, this game had it all. There’s romance, there’s blood, there’s justice, there’s vengeance. This is a rather dark game that puts a lot of focus on the thin line between vengeance and revenge, good and bad, right and wrong, victim and assailant. I found it to be a very thought-provoking game, and at the same time also clearly otome. Which basically mean, don’t worry, there’s plenty of wonderful romance to go around with all the darkness (:

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]