SHUTEN ORDER

A phenomenal Visual Novel experience.

Shuten Order is a great-looking game with a compelling story that you can’t wait to finish. I couldn’t wait to solve the mystery behind my character’s death!

Shuten Order is a dark visual novel that blends multiple narrative genres depending on the path you choose. Although its mechanics are somewhat superficial and certain sections can feel tedious, its intriguing story and memorable characters make it worth seeing through to the end.

Overall, Shuten Order’s real selling point is its sense of style. Each screen of the game is a feast for the eyes full of colour and interesting designs. While its main story is solid, the individual routes vary in quality and their gameplay often feels a little lacklustre. Even still, there is a lot to love in this strange world and it’s hard not to enjoy the time spent there. Praised be the Shuten Order.

The story, characters, and gameplay of Shuten Order are genuinely enjoyable, but the translation doesn’t match the game’s innate quality. I’m not trying to discourage anyone from buying Shuten Order. It’s fantastic. I hope it’s as successful as Hundred Line. But I also sincerely hope that a patch comes out to fix up the English script. Blessed be the Shuten Order.

Shuten Order is an ambitious visual novel that tells an intriguing story with consistently engaging characters and more than a few twists and turns. Unfortunately, with the inclusion of five distinct forms of gameplay driving the story, it ultimately feels bloated and directionless, and not one of the sub-genre sections is polished enough to stand on its own two feet. I wholeheartedly commend the audacious, multi-genre effort, but Shuten Order would have benefited from a lot more focus.

Shuten Order is a game that takes so much time to say so little. There are so many video games in this video game, and yet not one complete video game. The multiple routes being able to happen in any order hurt the mystery-driven story more than they help. The varied gameplay styles are underdeveloped and rarely make it feel like you’re playing anything other than a linear visual novel. The writing is boring at the best of times and actually insulting to me as a queer woman at the worst of times. This game clearly wants to swing for the fences, but it doesn’t accomplish anything other than striking out every time it steps up to the plate.

This game is peak - it has great conceptional art, good writing with exceptional plot twists and a great ost.

An ambitious title that successfully attempts to bring five different genres under one umbrella. On top of that, you are able to experience these in any order of your choosing which allows each player to discover the pieces of the overarching mystery in their own way. The genres included are Murder Mystery, Death Game, Dating Sim, Multi Perspective, and Survival Horror. While none of its individual game mechanics would be considered groundbreaking, the fact that it’s able to combine this many genres of games into a cohesive product is an achievement that deserves to be applauded. For fans of “mystery novel” games (Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, 13 Sentinels etc.) this is a must buy.

The video game has a fantastic style, as well as a well-crafted story and soundtrack. The characters are also well-written and diverse, with divine voice acting. The five gameplay segments aren’t particularly deep, and unfortunately, some don’t really deviate from the game’s “visual novel” genre. Despite this, they do manage to vary the pace a bit. Unfortunately, however, the game suffers from an abundance of dialogue and a forced autosave in the final chapter. The interrogation, in particular, would have benefited from more frequent save points.

Shuten Order Has Good Ideas but Fails in Execution Unfortunately, Shuten Order serves as a perfect example of how a lack of polish can undermine even the best ideas. Despite the innovative proposal of combining five different games into one, poor execution and technical issues make the new title from Too Kyo Games a mediocre release. The story was written by Kazutaka Kodaka, the same writer behind Danganronpa, and the premise is unusual: you wake up in a country ruled by a cult called the Shuten Order. After being contacted by a pair of angels, you discover that the leader of this cult — yourself — has been murdered. To be resurrected and prevent the end of the world, you must uncover who was responsible for your death. The main suspects behind the murder of the Shuten Order’s founder are the five ministers of the country. Because there’s a time limit to identify the culprit, you can only investigate one minister at a time. At this point, the game splits into five distinct stories — or routes — each focused on a different suspect, complete with its own unique gameplay mechanics. These five routes are both the game’s biggest strength and its greatest weakness. On the one hand, they keep players engaged for longer, adding new mechanics and preventing dialogue from becoming too repetitive. On the other hand, the short runtime of each route (around 6–7 hours in my case) prevents the mechanics from being properly developed. The novelty factor keeps things fun, but it’s a shame that all the mechanics end up feeling so shallow. A clear example is the Ministry of Security’s route, which plays like a top-down stealth game. While enjoyable, it only offers four different “stages”, and its main antagonist never truly lives up to the potential of being challenging. I could count on one hand the number of times I actually died. Aesthetically, the game is quite pleasing, with vibrant color palettes that effectively convey the protagonist’s unease in a city full of eccentric rules and eccentric people. The character designs are engaging and, at least to me, they don’t feel generic at all. Still, corners were cut in some areas, such as the pre-rendered backgrounds for the interactive environments. Overall, the story is well-constructed. The society ruled by the Shuten Order sparks a genuine curiosity to explore and learn more about its world. However, despite being a convincing murder mystery full of twists, the dialogue has serious problems. These problems manifest in two ways. First, the routes don’t interact with each other. Since players can choose the order of the stories, by the second or third route, it becomes tiresome to hear the same basic information repeated and to see the protagonist confused about things you already know. This doesn’t feel like a technological limitation — they certainly could have implemented a way for the game to recognize what information the protagonist has already gathered and adjust the dialogue accordingly. This is more a matter of budget and time. The second problem is the illusion of choice. While many decisions do lead to different dialogue (and one even affects the ending), it’s not uncommon for the protagonist to face “option A” and “option B,” only for both to funnel into the same outcome. Choosing the “wrong” one just makes the protagonist say: “I can’t do that. Better go with the other option.” Once again, this seems to come down to the game’s scope — doing otherwise would have required a much larger game than what was originally planned. Finally, the lack of polish also shows up in technical aspects. During my playthrough, I often came across mistranslations or text placement errors, such as dialogue bleeding off the screen. While not game-breaking, these issues immediately break immersion and give the impression of a rushed release. Coming from Too Kyo Games, who also released The Hundred Line — one of my favorite games of the year — I expected more. What was already problematic became glaringly worse with the technical and localization issues. Even so, I’d still say it’s worth playing, mainly for the story and the unique experience it offers.

As soon as I got it, I knew this was a mistake. While I was hoping for a detective game like Danganronpa or Phoenix Wright it turned out to be a visual novel with silly side stories, completely stopping the flow of the story. It relies on one dimensional anime tropes that have been done a million times. Like women acting like they don't want you but secretly wanting you (which i always found a bit creepy and icky) If you enjoy the typical anime visual novel, this probably scratches an itch. Otherwise, skip it.