SHUTEN ORDER

Shuten Order is a wildly inventive visual novel adventure that fuses detective work, horror, romance, and satire into five distinct storylines, backed by stunning art direction and a compellingly bizarre narrative from the creators of Danganronpa and Rain Code.

Shuten Order is a fantastic text adventure that truly sets itself apart from the crowd with its brilliant use of multiple routes to create the complete story. Other than some technical issues that hold the game back, it’s an impressive feat that shows how the Too Kyo team knows very well how to tell compelling stories.

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 an excitingly fresh new kind of game, creating the same sort of one-of-a-kind identity for itself that Danganronpa did when it first released. I can't wait to experience more of this terrific terrifying world.

Shuten Order is a fantastic, incredibly unique game that stands out from the crowd. The narrative and world-building are captivating, the characters are endearing and entertaining, and the gameplay is engaging due to its variety. While not without flaws, the experience it provides is genuinely unforgettable.

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.

Even after a week of finishing Shuten Order, I am still pondering how I feel. It's an excellent experience I overall enjoyed, yet left a tad bit unsatisfied at where the adventure ended. Strangely, I feel this is its own unique merit. A destination that invites you to reflect back on the journey, wishing to see more of the path forward, but content with the distance that has been trekked. Kodaka, Nakazawa, and the writing team’s simultaneous celebration and critique of religion is one I found thoughtfully uplifting just as much as it is deeply disturbing. A take that plays on familiarity to craft something subversive. Shuten Order may not reach the peaks present in their other works (thankfully it also avoids the pitfalls), but it is a deeply introspective murder mystery that left me lost in thought about the nature of my own existence past its conclusion.

Shuten Order is a well-written game that incorporates gameplay elements from multiple genres, including visual novels and adventure games, across multiple routes. The narrative, led by Danganronpa creator and writer Kazutaka Kodaka, is engaging from the very start. Shuten Order's immersive art style and Japanese voice-overs also make it a game that will be hard to put down once you get started.

I really enjoyed Shuten Order. The narrative kept me excited to find out the identity of The Founder’s killer. I really enjoyed the structure of every investigation being a different style of visual novel. But the game suffers from many of the issues that plague the visual novel genre. The writing is long-winded, and can be lazy at times. There are lots of bad anime tropes that are going to turn away anyone who isn’t already a visual novel fan. But if you love the genre, Shuten Order is one of my favorite new visual novels in quite a while.

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.