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GAME: Anonymous;Code Game Review




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Dark Mac



Joined: 17 May 2008
Posts: 309
PostPosted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 5:22 pm Reply with quote
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All in all, Anonymous;Code is a must-play if you're already invested in the Science Adventure series.


Interesting! Most people who love the SciAdv games seem to hate A;C in my experience, haha.
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Touma55



Joined: 22 May 2021
Posts: 222
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 1:41 am Reply with quote
Dark Mac wrote:
Quote:
All in all, Anonymous;Code is a must-play if you're already invested in the Science Adventure series.


Interesting! Most people who love the SciAdv games seem to hate A;C in my experience, haha.


Yeah its kinda funny lol. The game is clearly meant for fans but fans seem to hate it the most I know I do.
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Cryten



Joined: 19 Jan 2019
Posts: 968
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 2:41 am Reply with quote
The promo image used for this article makes it look like the girl is reaching out of some giant disembodied ears.
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pachy_boy



Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 1323
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 6:19 am Reply with quote
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He quickly recognizes that there is an intelligence behind what is happening—that he is being watched and helped by some mysterious ally he cannot perceive.

Sounds like The Neverending Story.

Since we're not getting a Robotics; Notes Dash anime, maybe we'll get one for this at some point?
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MMOSimca



Joined: 01 Nov 2011
Posts: 17
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 8:17 am Reply with quote
For what it is worth, I consider myself a Science Adventure fan (played them all), and I think Anonymous;Code is the single strongest story in the series.

Yes, it is short, it's low on fanservice (I consider this a positive though), and most of the side characters are weakly defined.

But the story that is present is an absolute banger. It hits on a core argument for the nature of reality as a simulation that is actually hard (experimentally impossible?) to refute from a scientific perspective, elevating the story above mere conspiracy. For once, the translation is actually excellent (somebody gave a shit!).

The biggest downside is the price. At $60, it's hard to recommend. If you're on a tight budget, wait for a sale in the next few years.
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Emerje



Joined: 10 Aug 2002
Posts: 7321
Location: Maine
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 8:23 am Reply with quote
Cryten wrote:
The promo image used for this article makes it look like the girl is reaching out of some giant disembodied ears.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. All I see is giant ears with hands reaching out of them.

Emerje
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Sharingan123412



Joined: 18 Jan 2024
Posts: 1
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 11:22 am Reply with quote
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In past games, these additional routes were great "what if" side stories to the main plot


I'm actually so glad they ditched the stupid route systems seen in earlier SciADV entries. They structured Anonymous;Code extremely well. But I will say that the only entry in which the routes were ever "what if" side stories was the original Steins;Gate, which effectively just has Okabe end up with a different girl in each ending. For all the other entries, this simply isn't true.

Robotics;Notes' "routes" are just chapters in what is a completely linear story, not "what if" side stories. And in Steins;Gate 0 as well as the Chaos; duology, the routes all happen and are extremely important to the overarching narrative:
spoiler[In Chaos;Head NoAH, the routes are series of simulations that Shogun makes Takumi experience when he's been disassembled by Norose to convince him to want to live. And obviously those routes have some of the most important reveals in the series: like the Sena route, which first establishes that SciADV takes place in a multi-layered simulation or the Ayase route, which also features interference from a "greater will" (and we later know from A;C is actually an observer hacking Ayase's vision). In Chaos;Child, the routes are delusion synchros between Takuru and each heroine. In fact, none of Chaos;Child even takes place in "reality" besides Silent Sky (which is the whole point of the game). Then for Steins;Gate 0 (which was half an adaptation of 3 pre-existing pieces of Steins;Gate side material), the whole point of the story is that it took the efforts of countless versions of Okabe for Operation Skuld to be possible, which was through a long chain of iterations serving as messengers for others. That's what the Mother Goose song in Kagari's chapter is supposed to represent. The story is like a broken telephone game. Somewhere along the chain, each of the routes in the VN happen and serve as a messenger for another until Milky Way Crossing Okabe. And we know this is true because of Okabe's speech on world line recursion from the extended nostalgia drive from Annularly Chained Ouroboros, one of the three pieces of pre-existing side material that Steins;Gate 0 was adapted from. It's why the 0 in Steins;Gate 0 is shaped like an ouroboros lol.]

But anyways, one of the biggest criticisms MAGES received in the past for SciADV entries was that the route systems in different games were overly convoluted and often times, insanely idiotic. Honestly, at times, they just had routes simply because they were staples of visual novels. This is evident in both Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes. But this time around, with Anonymous;Code, they addressed that concern, and turned it into a pure linear game with 18 bad endings. And these bad endings often reveal some incredible information. They have purpose. For instance, spoiler[when Pollon loads too far back, it's interference so great that his existence itself is threatened, and the world line shifts to the Beta attractor field. In the context of A;C's reveals on the true nature of simulation interference and the connection between gigalomania and reading steiner, that's an extremely purposeful inclusion. It's not unlike the O;N VN's bad end where Gamon and Ririka enter the world of 0s and 1s.] Anyhow, for once, they've actually structured an entry properly so it's crazy to me that people don't like the fact that it doesn't have routes. In the Chaos; games, the routes had definitive purpose but it was terrible to have to spend 2 hours skipping through the game each time around just to get all the delusion triggers necessary to branch onto each of them. In Robotics;Notes, you had to reply to tweeps to branch onto another chapter in the game under the deceptive guise of them being "routes". I'd much rather have a tighter paced, linear game with a lot of different bad endings. I can't see any narrative reason for including other routes.
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